To Make A Wish
by Ibrium
Summary: Bound to a mission they don't want, Kanda and Allen find themselves tangled in a centuries old web of deceit. Can they find the truth before it's too late? KandaAllen. Strong themes and graphic material; use your own discretion.
1. Chapter 1

**_To Make a Wish_**

Kanda X Allen

Disclaimer: All characters belong to the creators, publishers, and producers of D. Gray-Man

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Chapter 1: Swordsman's Cruelty

The dining-hall door slammed open, cracking the wall as the handle collided with the heavy stones. Silence fell slowly as conversations died off, broken only by the loud tapping of sharp boot-heels. Heads turned to watch the progress of the dark-haired swordsman as he advanced on Jerry like an avenging angel. In the back row, a snow-white head tipped toward flaming auburn.

"Why is Kanda so angry?" Allen whispered, staring as a stiff-shouldered Kanda accepted a large bowl of soba from the braided chef. Lavi didn't answer right away, instead watching mesmerized as Kanda turned sharply and marched from the hall. When the abused door had finally groaned shut once more, he managed to tear his eyes away from the forbidding woodwork and directed attention to the young exorcist's question.

"Yu hates summer. He also hates coming back after missions. And he hates it when Komui sends Linali to give him a lousy mission because he's to chicken-shit to do it himself. And--"

"Ano, Lavi," Allen interrupted. "Thank you, but listening to all of the things that Kanda hates will take way too much time."

"I suppose you're right," Lavi agreed and the two of them lapsed into silence. All around them conversations were being struck up once more and Jerry's pans rattled in the background as he began working on a Finder's order. Allen shifted in his seat so that he could reach the salt cellar and the white-haired exorcist began spooning the crystals into his soup rather absentmindedly. Lavi's eyebrows slowly slid up, eventually vanishing under his teal bandana as Allen's soup got saltier and saltier. Allen didn't seem to even notice what he was doing. Lavi waited patiently for the boy to snap back to reality. And waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, when Allen's soup closely resembled the Dead Sea, Lavi reached out and placed his hand over Allen's spoon-hand. Surprised, Allen jerked away, somehow managing to flip his chair over, and, flailing his arms madly, exorcist and chair crashed to the floor.

"Ano? Lavi? Could you help me up?" came Allen's voice from under the table. Laughing evilly, Lavi extended a hand to the prostrate boy and pulled him to his feet.

"What were you thinking about?" Lavi queried interestedly, wondering what could focus the exorcist to the exclusion of all else.

"Kanda."

Lavi stopped dead. "Kanda? Is he really that captivating?" Allen looked confused by Lavi's question, so the hammer-wielder felt prompted to elaborate. And to embarrass Allen.

"Oh, Allen!" Lavi exclaimed loud enough for everyone in the hall to hear clearly. "No _wonder_ you weren't paying attention! After all, why would anyone want to carry on a conversation with boring old Lavi when you could day-dream about the ice prince? He's _gorgeous_ isn't he? All that long black hair to spread out over the pillow. And he's so quiet, but I'll bet that doesn't last long when you're with him. Or is it the other way around? Maybe it's you screaming with your hair over the pillow? Either way, it's a good image--"

By this time, every face was a picture of stunned amazement and every ear was straining to hear Lavi's next words. Allen, face burning a brilliant crimson, stood frozen with horror. Lavi paused purely for dramatic effect, enjoying himself immensely.

"Or maybe," Lavi continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "just maybe, you've found an even better use for that shape-shifting cursed hand of yours. What idiot ever decided to call it 'Innocence', when I'm sure every exorcist has used it for a far-from-innocent purpose?"

Allen gulped like a landed fish, his mortification preventing him from fleeing the hall. Lavi grinned down at him from his lofty height, his one visible eye crinkling with glee.

"L-Lavi!" Allen choked out. "Shut up!"

"What's up? Did you not want your little Kanda-fantasy to be shared with everyone?" Lavi chattered on, oblivious to the silence that suddenly blanketed the hall. "I'm sure he's your uke in your dreams, isn't he?" Lavi paused as a chill of foreboding crept up his spine. He noticed Allen's wide-eyed gaze of horror as the white-haired boy stared past his shoulder. Lavi turned, feeling sick.

"Yu, I can explain--, " the hammer wielder started hastily, but Kanda beat him to the punch. Metaphorically, of course.

"Innocence activate! Mugen, ichigen!"

When the dust finally settled, Lavi was cowering behind an enlarged hammer and Allen was restraining Kanda. The huge, scaled innocence-hand was curled around the swordsman's body, crushing him to Allen's chest. Kanda was struggling furiously, his face ashen with anger. Casting an apologetic glance at Lavi, Allen began to drag the raven-haired boy from the room. Finders and exorcists alike watched amazed as Allen's parasitical innocence split into two parts; one to continue to restrain a writhing Kanda, the other to control Mugen, which continued to pulse with threatening energy.

The pair stumbled into the hall awkwardly as Kanda's legs had somehow become entangled in Allen's. They staggered a few steps from the mighty doors of the hall before collapsing in a heap just as Linali rounded the corner. Her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Kanda had apparently given up on breaking away from Allen with Mugen's power and was now clawing at the white-haired boys shoulder and neck, having wriggled around to face the other exorcist within tight confines of the parasitical arm. Allen' face was obscured by the long inky tresses trailing over Kanda's shoulders, but Linali simply assumed he was enjoying himself because his hips bucked up against the older exorcist occasionally.

On the floor, Kanda kneed Allen viciously in the thigh again, causing the smaller boy to write and buck in an attempt to dissuade the sword master.

"Let go of me, you son-of-a-bitch," hissed Kanda, sinking his nails into the soft flesh of Allen's neck. Allen's response was cut off in a moaning gurgle as Kanda's hands tightened. The innocence gripping the swordsman clenched around his chest, bruising his ribs and driving the air from his lungs in a short, sharp cry.

Linali's face burned with embarrassment as the two boys struggled against each other on the floor.

"Ano," she began before choking on her tongue. "Ano," she tried again. "Komui wants to talk to Kanda in the laboratory."

At that moment Kanda let out a strangled gasp and collapsed. Allen, who no longer had to contain a struggling Kanda, sighed with relief and relaxed.

"What happened to him?" Linali asked while secretly preparing herself for an answer that was sure to make her blush.

"He passed out," Allen explained, looking surprised. Linali stared at him with an expression that indicated that she was waiting for further explanation rather than a statement of the obvious. Allen thought for a moment, attempting to remember something that would have caused Kanda to slide into unconsciousness. The boy's face suddenly lighted as he realized what he had done.

"I guess I squeezed him too hard."

The blush that flared into existence on Linali's face looked painful, but the flustered woman managed to state in a semi-calm voice, "What should I tell Komui? He wanted to talk to Kanda."

Allen immediately volunteered his assistance, "I'll take him down to see Komui and explain what happened." Linali could only nod vaguely in agreement as the cursed exorcist returned Mugen to its sheath on Kanda's hip, pausing to adjust the swordsman's mussed clothes and to tie a knot in Kanda's belt, which had broken sometime during their fight. By the time Allen had decided on the best way to carry the prone exorcist down to the laboratory, Linali had found a mission of vital importance to accomplish and vanished.

Allen hoisted the older and heavier boy over his shoulders and flipped the long black strands of hair out of his face then set off for Komui's personal laboratory, the home of Komurin (in all of its stages of evolution) and Komui's "medical" equipment.

Mugen's hilt dug into the back of Allen's neck with each step he took and the white-haired teen was soon wriggling uncomfortably under the combined weight of Kanda and his own innocence, which trailed on the floor after him. Allen had not returned his arm to its normal state out of necessity: there was no telling exactly how much damage Kanda could do in the time it took Allen to activate his innocence and Allen remembered all-too-well the repairs Komui had done on his arm the first time Kanda had attacked him with Mugen.

_And he wasn't even particularly angry with me then, either, _Allen added mentally, shuddering slightly at the image his over-active imagination presented him with: Kanda cleaving him into pieced of various sizes with Mugen in the name of revenge.

Deeper and deeper into the fortress of the Order they went and Allen became more and more uncomfortable, finally seeking relief through distraction in the form of his surroundings.

_Wall tile. Floor tile. Ceiling tile. _Allen listed mentally. _Left foot. Right foot. Bookman. Mugen in the back of my neck. Kanda's damn belt rubbing a welt on my shoulder. _Allen could feel himself sliding off an imaginary precipice. _Kanda's hair everywhere. Everywhere! How does he take care of it all? _Sweat beaded on the boy's brow from the effect of avoiding that particular train of thought and his shoulders stiffened unconsciously, digging into Kanda's bruised ribs.

The swordsman moaned softly, his breath whooshing softly past the curve of Allen's ear. Seconds later, he hit the ground with a solid thud. Allen stood shaking in front of the crumpled sword wielder.

_What the hell? Why did I do that? _Allen's thoughts jumbled around in his head. Shivers ran down his spine as he turned to look at Kanda, who, since his ribs had just celebrated an unceremonious reunion with the floor, moaned again. Allen twitched like a nervous ferret. Just then, Komui's piercing voice echoed down the hall.

"Where is that arrogant brat? He's probably spending time with my sweet Linali doing unspeakable things to her!" Komui's voice crept slowly up the register until reached soprano wailing. A huge sweat drop appeared on Allen's forehead. _Kanda with Linali? _He thought hysterically. _Komui really has gone insane. I'd better get Kanda to the Lab before Komui lets out--_

"Komurin III! Take out that octopus Kanda!"

Allen let out a screech of horror, seized Kanda around the middle, and sprinted down the hall, desperately trying to reach the lab before the Komurin monster found them. He failed. Miserably. As he rounded the last corner, mechanical hands latched onto Kanda and drug him into the air. Unfortunately, Allen's huge innocence arm, which had been curled around the swordsman's limp form, was caught by the hands as well. The white-haired boy thrashed wildly as he was pulled along after Kanda into the gaping maw of Komurin III, screaming at the top of his lungs.

"No, no, no, nonononono," Allen sobbed, his cries muffled by the thick metal walls of Komurin's belly. He could feel the great beast swaying with each stride and feel the jarring impact of each step. The floor of the tiny room within the beast tilted first in one direction to another, sending Kanda's still unconscious body sliding back and forth over the smooth steel. As Allen watched, Komurin took an especially large step. On edge of the floor jerked up and Allen found himself careening across the floor toward Kanda. The two boys slammed together and then crashed into the wall. When Komurin III's next step sent them in the other direction, Allen was clutching his head and seeing stars, completely winded because Mugen's hilt had dug into his belly when he had collided with Kanda.

_This couldn't get any worse, _Allen thought. Just then, Kanda's piercing, cold eyes opened. _Oh. It just got worse. _Allen swallowed nervously and tried to edge away inconspicuously. Kanda was silent for a long unpleasant moment before he spoke.

"Where are we, Bean sprout?" his voice was soft and calm and all the more terrifying because of it.

"In Komurin III," Allen replied, giving up on inconspicuous to scoot away toward the opposite side of Komurin's belly.

"In . . . Komurin . . ." Kanda repeated slowly, his eyebrow starting to twitch with anger. "You let yourself be caught by _Komurin_?" The disgust in his voice was nearly palpable.

"Kanda, just let me--" Allen's explanation was interrupted by his suddenly indrawn breath as his eyes caught slight movement in the dim light. Kanda was drawing Mugen, its diamond-hard innocence blade ringing against the metal of it's sheathe.

"Kanda, wait--"

"Innocence, activate!" Mugen's blade howled through the air like a banshee, cleaving the half-light like a silver lightning bolt. Allen's eyes bugged out as the sword sheared through the air just in front of his face. A few fine, white hairs drifted down to the steel floor. There was a soft click as Kanda resettled his innocence in its sheathe.

"K-Kanda?" Allen stuttered, unsure of why he wasn't dead. "What-?" At that moment, Komurin III shuddered and collapsed, its top half sliding to the stone floor of the hall with a sickening crunch. Kanda shot one last ugly look at Allen, hopped down from Komurin's remains, and stormed back in the direction of the dining hall and his room. Allen watched with relief for a moment before he remembered why he was heading to the laboratory in the first place. With a cry of exasperation, he ran down the hall after the retreating exorcist.

"Wait! Kanda, wait!" he called to the unconcerned elder boy. "Komui wanted you to go to the lab." Kanda stopped moving briefly, probably considering whether or not to ignore the summons, then spun on his heel and marched past Allen. Allen watched him walk for a while, fascinated by the swaying of Kanda's hair, then set off to find Lavi. He had gone maybe three steps when a figurative wall of sound made his ear-drums want to explode.

"KANDA! HOW DARE YOU DO SUCH AWFUL THINGS TO MY DEAR LINALI!" came Komui's voice, outrageously outraged. There was a brief pause in the conversation, presumably filled by Kanda's reply, and then-

"ALLEN! KOMUI WANTS TO SEE YOU, NOW!"

Allen sighed_. Why on earth is he referring to himself in the third person_? he wondered idly, trotting down the hall, his boots tapping loudly on the heavy flagstones. He hesitated before the door, sucked in a deep breath, and slowly pulled open the thick door. He caught a brief glimpse of a sullen Kanda, a slightly disheveled laboratory staff, odd and ends of as-of-yet unmade Komurins, and a partially crumpled Timcampy before Komui latched onto him like a deranged limpet.

"ALLEN! KANDA SAID HE WAS WITH YOU AND NOT WITH LINALI!" Komui shrieked directly into the white haired exorcist's ear.

"Well, yes. He was only with Linali for a couple of minutes, but-"

"YOU LEFT KANDA ALONE WITH LINALI FOR A WHOLE MINUTE? THERE"S NO TELLING WHAT HE MIGHT HAVE DONE TO HER!"

Kanda's eyebrow was twitching furiously and there was no telling what he might have done to _Komui_ if Linali had not walked in to bring the laboratory staff coffee. Komui let go of Allen like he had been burned, only to attach himself to Linali's legs a second later.

"LINALI! TELL YOUR NII-SAN WHAT THAT HORRIBLE OCTOPUS KANDA DID TO YOU!" he wailed, tears welling in his eyes.

"What are you talking about? Kanda was assaulting Allen, not me," Linali replied, sounding bewildered. Kanda had gone suspiciously still. "But you shouldn't punish him," she continued, "because," her voice dropped to a confiding whisper, "Allen looked like he was, well, enjoying it."

A deaf man could have heard a pin drop in that laboratory. The silence was all-consuming and absolute. Every eye was trained either on Kanda, who looked as though, at any moment, he might draw Mugen and put an abrupt end to all of their miserable lives, or on Allen, whose face could have easily made a tomato envious. Suddenly, Komui's laughter broke the tomb-like atmosphere, swiftly joined by a chuckle from Lavi, who had made his was to the lab while Komurin III had been detaining the other two exorcists.

"It looks like Yu isn't as chaste as he pretends to be, what with jumping on Allen in the main hall and all," Lavi whooped, still chuckling quietly. "No wonder you were blushing so hard when I was teasing you during breakfast, Allen. All the pleasant memories, eh? I suppose that answers my question, though..."

Lavi's voice trailed off theatrically and Allen, very confused as to what question Lavi was talking about, walked right into his trap by asking, "What question?" The second the words fell from his lips, Allen felt a sick sense of fascination, the same feeling that one gets while watching something that is too horrible to turn away from. Lavi's grin widened and turned wicked.

"L-Lavi...please, _please_, don't answer that question," Allen begged, hoping, _praying_, that the hammer-wielder would for once, _just this once_ Allen pleaded mentally, exercise some discretion. Lavi's smile only became wider, stretching into the toothy grin of a cat toying with a trapped mouse. Allen shook his head wildly. Lavi shot him one last evil look, then turned his attention to Kanda.

"I'm not going to tell you, Yu," Lavi teased, his voice and manner flirtatious.

Allen's shoulders sagged with relief, and then something happened that would forever change how he looked at catastrophe.

"D'ya wanna know what the question was, Yu?"

Kanda's grip on Mugen's hilt tightened until his knuckles turned white. It was obvious that the teen was struggling with himself in some desperate inner battle because his arms trembled faintly with the exertion of trying not to reflexively decapitate the smiling red-head. The lab technicians watched with a sort of macabre curiosity as the raven-haired exorcist teetered on the edge of civility.

"No," Kanda finally hissed from between teeth clenched so tightly it was a wonder they didn't shatter. "No, I don't want to hear what the question you were discussing with Bean-sprout this morning is." Lavi faked disappointment for all of three seconds before his true, garrulous nature won over his common sense.

"Allen and I were trying to decide whether or not you were a bottom in bed, Kanda."

Kanda already-frayed temper snapped. Mugen cleared the sheathe so quickly that the blade's movement seemed to cleave the very fabric of time itself. Displaced air rushed back into the void the sword had left behind with a clap like thunder and the wind born from that single sword-stroke sent the enormous piles of paper and miscellaneous items that littered Komui's desk whirling skyward like a flock of malignant doves. There was a moment of perfect stillness and clarity in the laboratory following Kanda's abrupt motion, broken only by the soft fluttering of a thousand papers to the floor. The teal headband that permanently covered part of Lavi's face split in two with a soft rip and fell through the air to join the displaced papers on the floor. A single drop of blooded beaded on the clear flesh of Lavi's forehead and slid down his cheek like a scarlet teardrop.

Lavi's face froze in an expression of startled fear as his sea-green eyes met Kanda's scorching gaze. Kanda's fierce stare was a warning, daring Lavi to take his little joke just one step further. Lavi's eyes narrowed and he swallowed hard, but he couldn't resist a dare. All the laughter had gone out of the hammer-wielder, slipping out of him like the blood that dripped onto the white papers below and making his next words as hard and resolute and deadly-serious as Mugen's blade.

"I think you _are_ the uke, Kanda," Lavi pronounced calmly. "You try so hard to keep others away, put them down. I think you'll lose control if you get close to someone, and that just wouldn't do, would it, Yu? I think you want to be mastered, Kanda. It would be so easy for you to just give up, to lay down your defenses, to yield to another. But your scared, aren't you, Kanda? You're afraid that once you lose control, you'll never get it back."

Kanda's shoulders stiffened and his jaw clenched. He turned on one heel and marched toward the door. Soft whispers had sprung up all around as the laboratory staff discussed Lavi's words, but Allen, Linali, and Komui remained still and quiet as a tomb, waiting in stunned disbelief for the next events to unfold themselves in all their painful splendor.

"Are you going to leave, Yu?" Lavi continued, his normally joking tones now harsh and pained, his face stony and drawn. "Are you going to run away from this? Are you going to run away from _me_?"

Kanda stopped short, his hand inches from the door handle. "Lavi-," he began, but the hammer-wielder cut him off, his voice shaking with suppressed sobs.

"Damn it, Yu! I've known you for years, since the very first day you came here dragging that damn sword behind you, and you still won't relax around me!" Lavi choked on the bitter taste his words left behind, but struggled to finish, his words pouring out like water from behind a breached dam. "I'm not going to hurt you, Yu. Just give me a chance to get close to you. You let Allen get close to you, to see a little bit of the person I know is hiding under that frigid bastard of an exterior, so why not me?"

Allen was startled by the jealousy and anger that marred Lavi's words and a sick feeling twisted in the young exorcist's gut. Flashes of all the times he had spent with Kanda flitted through his mind like silver fish in a vast ocean and the white-haired boy couldn't help but feel guilty though he knew that he had done no wrong. His eyes fell on Kanda, who stood with his back to Lavi's desperately emotional, heart-felt pleas. _Kanda_, he thought sadly, _be gentle with this. This isn't something that can be solved with a sword. Even you can't just tread on another's feelings, and I know Lavi doesn't see this as a joke anymore._ Kanda's head dipped as though he had heard the white-haired exorcist's words. His inky bangs shifted to obscure his eyes and there was a momentary pause as everyone waited for Kanda's response. The silence deepened and became expectant when Kanda drew breath to give his answer.

"Lavi," Kanda said softly, completely monotone. "You're annoying." Lavi gasped as though he had been struck and true tears spilled from his soft eyes, mingling with the blood on his cheek to form a roseate rain.

"Kanda!" Allen yelled, furious at Kanda's crass statement. "Kanda, you bastard!" The boy strode across the lab and gripped the taller, black-haired exorcist by the collar, shaking him angrily. Seconds later, the shorter boy was shoved roughly against Kanda's chest as Lavi brushed past and sprinted from the room weeping. The two exorcists toppled to the floor from the force of their Lavi-induced collision.

"Lavi!" Allen cried out after the hammer-wielder while he wallowed in the huge paper pile on the floor, Kanda on his lap.

Komui crossed his arms over his chest and nodded his head with the air of one about to make a great and masterful statement. "I'm convinced," he announced. "Kanda didn't do anything to Linali." Allen, who had resumed shaking Kanda to within n inch of his life, paused to stare at Komui in disbelief. Linali sighed and tapped her brother on the shoulder.

"Nii-san, I don't think you understand the gravity of this situation," she said as green energy began to flow from her boots. "Why don't you go meditate on it?" The toe of her boot-innocence slammed into his chest and Komui flew backward through the air until a wall interposed itself between the hapless man and his flight-path. Komui slid to the floor twitching.

"And you," Linali snapped at Kanda, picking up a clipboard. The laboratory staff recoiled, having felt Linali's punishment-by-clipboard before. "How dare you be so cruel to Lavi? He's been nothing but good to you since the day you came here, and this is how you repay him. I want you to get the hell out of here, Kanda. Your mission folder is on Komui's desk."

Kanda glared at her, but didn't argue. He stood and shook Allen off his collar, then sifted through the papers remaining on the desk until he unearthed a pair of leather-bound folders. Kanda stared at them for a moment before speaking.

"There are two of them."

"That's right," Linali snarled. "Lavi came down to the lab because Komui was going to send the two of you together, but I guess we can't have the mighty Kanda working with someone he finds annoying." Allen shifted uncomfortably on the floor, looking surreptitiously for a place to hide from Linali's wrath. Seconds later, he noticed that he was alone in the room with Linali, Kanda, and an unconscious Komui. _The staff must have escaped while Linali was yelling at Kanda_, Allen realized.

"I'll just go by myself," Kanda stated, adjusting Mugen's position on his hip.

"That is unacceptable, Kanda," Linali hissed at him. "Read your report. Three finders are missing and six of them have vanished outright. You _are not_ going by yourself." Her gaze fell on Allen. "Take him with you."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Pillow Talk

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Last chapter: _"I'll just go by myself," Kanda stated, adjusting Mugen at his hip. "That is unacceptable, Kanda," Linali hissed at him. "Read your report. Three finders are missing and six of them have vanished outright. You are not going by yourself." Her gaze fell on Allen. "Take him with you."_

* * *

Tap. Tap tap. Tap. Tap tap tap. 

The sound echoed faintly in the confines of Allen's sparsely furnished room, creating the impression of a thousand crazed woodpeckers in a hardwood forest. Allen cringed slightly as the steady reverberations burrowed into his skull and droned in his already-ringing ears. There was suddenly an achingly sweet silence and the white-haired exorcist paused in his packing to breathe a sigh of relief. _Thank God,_ he thought, _I swear I would have gone crazy if Kanda tapped his foot just one more-- _there was the soft shushing noise of a page being turned, and then--

Tap. Tap TAP. TAPTAPTAP.

"Time," Allen growled, turning to glare at Kanda who responded with an aristocratic sneer and an increased rate of foot tapping. _Stupid Kanda_, _whispered a sullen voice in his head, first you have to be an ass all the way to the lab-- even when you were unconscious and I had to carry you and that blasted Mugen-- then you were an ass to Lavi, and _then_ you had to get me assigned as your replacement partner for a mission because Lavi was in no condition to do so. Ass. _Allen had the vague and nagging feeling that he had overlooked some important detail in his list of irritating things the arrogant swordsman had managed to accomplish in his presence. He concentrated on that train of thought, attempting to follow it to the end, when it was cruelly derailed by that gentle, almost inquisitive, rapping of Kanda's toe on the stone floor.

_Oh, yes,_ Allen thought sourly, _that. _Out loud, the white-haired exorcist's words were far more polite: "Kanda, I can just finish up my packing and meet you at the boat in a little while. You don't have to wait for me here." _In my room, tapping your foot. Reading the mission briefing, watching me pack, and tapping your foot._ Some of Allen's irritation must have shown in his expression because the swordsman's gaze focused on the younger boy for a moment. Their eyes met and Kanda made a point of staring a hole through Allen's forehead before the elder exorcist shifted to lean against the door more comfortably while he made an indeterminate sound deep in his throat. Allen, now thoroughly angered, twitched and bristled at the other boy's lofty attitude.

"Look, Kanda," Allen started, ready to give the aloof young man a piece of his mind while he stuffed his small suitcase. "I don't want you looming over me and watching me pack! And you know what else?" By this time the boy was almost apoplectic with barely-suppressed rage and was brandishing the nearest article of clothing at an unconcerned Kanda. "I think what you did to Lavi was unspeakably cruel. And guess what else!" Allen's voice trailed off towards the end of his sentence as he noticed that all of Kanda's attention was invested in staring at Allen's out-flung and violently waving hand.

"Wha--?" Allen choked long before he could finish his sentence because there, clutched in his hand and still swaying slightly from the strength of the shaking it had received, was a pair of scarlet, slightly frayed, silken boxers. Pale gray eyes widened with sudden dismay.

"These aren't mine!" the white-haired boy yelped, shoving the boxers down into his duffel bag and covering them with a clean white shirt.

"So you're taking them with you anyway?" Kanda remarked flippantly, arching one perfect dark brow. Allen froze, a huge sweat drop sliding down his face. _Oooh, awkward. Damn eyebrow,_ a little voice giggled maniacally in his mind and for a moment, Allen considered the possibility that he was, even now, sitting in an asylum somewhere chewing on a padded wall. Then pale gray eyes met a stare the color of cold iron, of thunder, of storm-tossed sea, and thought fled altogether. Allen looked away first, unable to respond to the expectant overtones in those eyes. Seconds ticked by slowly and, before the younger exorcist could come up with a sufficiently un-suspicious answer to Kanda's probing, the swordsman's patience, never very long or elastic to begin with, ran out.

"So," the raven-tressed boy prodded. "Whose are they?" Allen blushed to match the boxers in question.

"Idunno..." he mumbled inaudibly, his words mashed together by the overwhelming sense of his embarrassment.

"What?" Kanda pushed, irritated by Allen's attempt at evasiveness. The younger boy glared at him. _Why can't he just leave it like it is? _Allen pondered. _Does he really want to watch me make a fool of myself so much?_

"I," Allen pronounced very clearly through gritted teeth, "don't know whose they are." His words were absolute and final and brooked no argument or further questioning. There was, however, one slight problem with Allen's assertion: it was absolute and final and brooked no argument and was therefore unacceptable to that implacable and impossible force that was Kanda. Allen was not aware of this little miscalculation and resumed his packing, having reached the misguided conclusion that the boxer discussion was over. He was sadly mistaken.

"You were so drunk you don't remember who you slept with?" the obnoxious, frustrating black-haired exorcist asked, his tone sly. His comment struck a nerve with the force of a wrecking ball slamming into the side of a building; Allen hissed like a wet cat and turned to glare at Kanda with the burning, fiery hatred of a thousand suns.

"Kanda. I understand that you are socially atrophied and that, for you, politeness and discretion are foreign concepts, but I'd like to share something with you." Allen punctuated his sentence by yanking the source of all evil (the boxers) out of his suitcase and zipping the abused luggage closed with a single vicious tug. "First, I _don't know_ whose boxers they are because, until about two minutes ago, I had never seen them. Second, when something like this happens, unless you are a very, _very_ close friend, you don't keep prying into other people's business because it's_ rude. _Third, I have never been drunk, and I have never slept with anyone!"

There was a loud _pop!_ as Allen's hand smacked down over his mouth as though he was trying to stem the flow of his words by sheer physical force. Kanda scrutinized him carefully for a moment, his cold, dark-eyed gaze strangely calculating, then turned and left Allen's room.

"I'm leaving in one hour, Bean sprout." he called back to the other boy in place of a farewell. "One hour. I won't wait for you if you're late."

Allen continued to sit in the middle of his floor, his eyes fixed on the space Kanda had just vacated, completely out-of-touch with reality. _Well, that was weird,_ he thought after the minute hand of his clock had ticked its way around the clock face several times. Finally, sighing in frustration, Allen stood and picked up his small suitcase and, after a moment's thought, stooped to pick up the boxers as well. He clenched the slippery crimson fabric in one fist, wadded it into a ball, and shoved it deep into his left pocket. Wearily, he pushed open his door and stepped out into the hall, which was fortunately void of Kanda's presence. Timcampy, who had been waiting patiently for the white-haired exorcist to emerge, settled immediately onto his head with a contented flutter. There was a soft metallic creak as Timcampy's mouth gaped open, revealing rows of serrated teeth and a small tube from which a holographic image of Kanda emerged. The false Kanda stormed down the hall, obviously angry-- then the scene blurred as Timcampy fast-forwarded-- and a Komurin appeared. It took a little while for Allen to figure out that image of Kanda had been recorded as the swordsman went to get breakfast earlier that moment. Having reached that conclusion, Allen focused once more on the image now presented. The date and time flashed above the scene, indicating that whatever Komurin was doing had occurred earlier that day, sometime after breakfast. _I must have been on the way to the lab when this happened_, Allen thought, then shuddered.

"There's _another_ one?" he groaned, noticing the bold scarlet lettering splashed over the machine's side. _Komurin IX? How many of these things does Komui have?_ Allen watched the memory Timcampy projected with trepidition. Komurin IX wandered down the hall opening each door in turn and depositing a more-or-less neatly folded pile of clothing on the nearest available surface. Komurin IX's holograph drew closer and closer to Allen's room, leaving behind laundry as it went, and Allen, who had been confused as to why exactly Timcampy was showing him such a bizarre image, shoved his hand into his pocket. His _left_ pocket. Silk, soft and cool, met his fingers.

"You mean Komui made a Komurin for doing the laundry?" Allen blurted, completely horrified. The false Komurin IX had finally reached Allen's door in Timcampy's memory. It stopped and removed a pile of clothing from some storage area deep inside its mechanical bowels, then hesitated, trembling slightly as its miniscule computerized brain whirred and rumbled, small sparks shooting out from under the casing on its head. A rather ridiculous error button flickered to life on the Komurin-beast's haunches. -CLOTHES PILE INCOMPLETE-, the freakish machine burbled, its tone crackling with static. Its robotic arms rotated and one hand began rummaging through the vast thoracic space that occupied much of the machine's belly. Soft beeping marked its progress, much like a tracking sonar, the tones becoming louder and more frequent as the giant hand neared its goal. Finally, with a cry of -TARGET AQUIRED-, Komurin IX whipped a now-familiar article of clothing from its inner stash and, having added it delicately to the top of Allen's pile, dumped all of the clothes on the white-haired exorcist's bed and shambled off to complete some other obscure and secretive task.

Allen's eyes narrowed. "Komui, you idiot," he growled_ sotto_ _voce,_ breathing hard through his nose. "You have no idea how much embarrassment you've caused me."

Timcampy's mouth snapped shut, cutting off the projected image of Komurin IX, and the little golem began to nibble on a strand of white hair in an affectionate manner. Allen stroked the cold metal skin of the golem with an absentminded finger while he imagined various tortures to which a certain technological developer should be subjected. Suddenly, Allen's little bubble of anger burst, and, having no other emotion upon which to fall back, he settled into a state of apathy.

"I guess I better find out whose these are, Timcampy," Allen remarked, his voice tired. General Cross's golem flapped its way off the exorcist's head in order to begin an odd aerial maneuver that culminated in Timcampy gripping Allen's black sleeve with its many rows of golden teeth and making an honest attempt at towing the boy down a small corridor that stuck out at right angles to the main hall. Allen, ever obliging, followed in the golem's wake.

The lights got dimmer and the corridor got narrower as the strange pair progressed until Allen was stumbling and groping along a tiny passage barely wider than the spread of Timcampy's wings. Cobwebs wafted about like rags in a gale, shivering with the wind of their passage and adhering firmly to Allen's nose, mouth, hands, and generally sticking all over his once-black uniform. Soon the exorcist was gagging on the fine, strong, silken fibers that had somehow managed to find their way into the panting boy's mouth.

"How much farther do we have to go?" a distraught Allen asked plaintively of the silent golem. He added as an afterthought, "_Where_ are we going?" Timcampy just fluttered faster, bobbing and weaving through the web-congested air-space. Allen cried out unhappily and increased his pace to keep up with the speeding mini-machine. The two rounded a tight corner at a dead sprint, Allen grazing his elbow on the far wall, and found themselves rapidly approaching a bright, white light. Second-thoughts began whizzing through the cursed boy's head and were vocalized as an odd gurgling sound that had been meant to be a scream as the light suddenly became blindingly, painfully intense and the floor dropped out from under Allen's feet.

"AAAAAHHHH-umph!"

Allen's horrified shriek of terror was abruptly silenced by his unanticipated relocation of the stone floor. With his face. He sat up clutching his much-abused nose, slightly dazed and very confused. The largish lump embedded in his belly came free and revealed itself to be a partially crushed and very unhappy Timcampy, who flapped its wings madly to gain altitude and, having reached a height even with the hand covering Allen's nose, sank metallic teeth into the fragile flesh of Allen's right-hand pointer finger. Allen responded with a howl of pain and by shaking his hand frantically in an attempt to dislodge the enraged golem.

A few moments later, when metaphorical ruffled feathers had been smoothed and Timcampy had been appeased and profusely apologized to, Allen, who was gripping a mangled finger wrapped in a kerchief, began to take in his surroundings. He was in a room he had never seen before or indeed ever heard of. A broad door was set into the far wall with three wide steps flowing from beneath it down into the floor, which lay a full two feet below the threshold. The floor was of fine, tight-grained, honey-colored oak, which gleamed reddish in the light of the fire. The fire itself was behind the exorcist, it had been the flagstone hearth that Allen had fallen upon, but it was the enormous fireplace that caught Allen's attention. Fully large enough for a tall man, _like Lavi_, Allen's mind supplied, to stand in without having to duck his head and wide enough to roast a whole boar, the vast stone facade dominated the wall nearest the exorcist. The mighty slabs from which it was carved were etched in abstract figures, runes, and sigils, all of which were unfamiliar to Allen, save one, which was carved halfway up on the left-hand side.

"I've seen this before," Allen told Timcampy, tracing the spiky shape of the rune with one fingertip. "I don't remember where, but it was recently, since I joined the Black Order." The exorcist turned to survey the room more closely, this time noting the heavy, formal mahogany chairs and the rich carpets that were strewn almost haphazardly about the room. Thick tomes dealing with everything from medicine and religion to astronomy and akuma were scattered over the well-polished and highly reflective surface of a long, low table in the center of the room. Curious, Allen sifted through them, selecting one at random, and then settled himself into a nearby chair and began to read.

Minutes passed quietly as Allen immersed himself in the book, which dealt with fantastical monsters other than akuma, turning the dry, age-yellowed pages carefully. He was so engrossed in the writing, each word written in an archaic manner, that he never heard the door creak open on its old iron hinges, never noticed the soft thud of heavy boots touching down on the magnificent wood of the floor. He did, however, realize that he was not alone when large hands clapped down over his shoulders. Allen's spine became ram-rod strait, forcing his head to lift as his shoulders stiffened. The young boy's body tried to follow his spine's example, causing the exorcist to stand swiftly. Or rather, try to. The top of the white-haired teen's head slammed into the point of the other person's chin.

Allen's eyes watered with pain, but his gentle and concerned nature, as well as his guilt, seized control of his body, overriding his self-protective instinct, which was to beat the intruder into a bloody pulp. He turned to offer his apologies to whoever he had struck, and--

"Lavi?" Allen started, his tone somewhere between surprise and concern. "Lavi, what are you doing here?"

Lavi, who had collapsed in pain to sprawl disjointedly on the floor, sat up rubbing his aching jaw. He shot a mock-glare at the younger exorcist before he answered in a voice rippled with suppressed amusement at the other's surprise. "I could ask you the same question, Allen, and I would have more right to an answer." Lavi's words sailed over Allen's head and the younger boy simply stared at the auburn-haired man in confusion. The hammer-wielder sighed and explained.

"I live here, Allen."

"What_? Here_?" Allen gasped, taking in the stern furniture, the heaps of dusty tomes, and the forbidding fireplace. Lavi sweat dropped, amazed at Allen's apparent naiveté and ignorance.

"Um...no...Not_ here_, here, but in the sense of _near_ here," Lavi said carefully. Allen stared at him blankly, totally nonplussed. _Are you joking? _Lavi thought, already starting to laugh. Finally, taking pity on the other boy, Lavi elaborated. "This is like an entry room; my room is down the hall a little. C'mon, I'll show you."

They walked together up the steps to the door, Lavi leading and Allen trailing along behind like a lost puppy, the book he had been reading still clutched to his chest.

"Allen, you have to leave the book here. The panda would kill me if it wasn't here when he wanted it," Lavi told him, prying the heavy, leather-bound volume out of Allen's hands and setting it down on a nearby chair. Allen nodded vaguely as they continued through the same entryway that Lavi had first appeared from. A brightly lit and formal wood-paneled hallway stretched out before them for quite some distance, but Lavi stopped a short distance away at the second door on the right.

"Here, Allen," he said, opening the iron-bound door with ease. Allen noticed the small brass plaque bearing the name 'Lavi' that was nailed to the thick oak just before the portal swung open enough for Allen's gray eyes to catch sight of the ordered chaos within. Lavi saw Allen hesitate out of the corner of his eye and remedied the situation by simply dragging a protesting Allen inside. The door shut behind them with all of the cold finality of a crypt closing for all eternity. Allen quivered.

Once inside, the white-haired exorcist's eyes widened with shocked awe. The room was small, but was made even smaller by the heaps of books that stretched up to the ceiling. Bookshelves, all filled to the breaking-point and groaning with the weight of their burdens, hid every wall, dwarfing the heavy desk that was shoved in one corner, covered in odd artifacts with every drawer overflowing wit files and miscellaneous scraps of paper. Presumably the floor was carpeted, but it was difficult to be sure because Lavi's clothes and other, unidentified articles were spread in a thick layer over the entire area. There was only one spot in the entire room that did not have some sort of paper or pottery hiding its surface with clutter: Lavi's full-size, four-poster bed. The bed gave the impression of being fluffy, what with the piles of fat pillows and the thick, down-filled coverlet.

Lavi shifted from one foot to the other a little sheepishly. "I'd offer you a place to sit down, but I'm afraid clearing you a space would put a kink in my organization."

"_This_ is _organized?_" Allen asked, aghast.

"Ah, hahaha," Lavi giggled, rubbing the back of his head. "Just sit on the bed, that'll do just fine."

"Ano," Allen said softly, still in shock. "Is it really okay for me to walk across all your...paperwork?" Lavi didn't answer, he simply wrapped his arms around Allen's chest and threw the younger, smaller, lighter boy about ten feet to land on his rump in the middle of the bed.

Allen wasn't prepared for his sudden flight, nor was he expecting the coverlet and mattress to be soft enough to allow his hips to sink. Startled, Allen fell back among the over-stuffed pillows, his booted feet lifting as his torso flopped downward. When he finally came to rest, he was sprawled spread-eagled over the vivid orange coverlet, its soft silk fabric cool against his flushed cheeks. Allen felt the bed dip as Lavi joined him on the mattress and stretched out on his side facing the white-haired boy, his hand resting next to Allen's hip.

Allen turned his head, his white hair spreading out over the scarlet pillow-case like a halo. Pale gray eyes met clear sea-green and held.

"Allen, I need to talk to you," Lavi breathed, his suddenly serious voice barely above a whisper.

"Lavi, my boots are dirty--" Allen began, worried about the havoc the filth coating his footgear was wreaking on the silk coverlet.

"Shhhh. I don't care, Allen." Lavi interrupted gently, smoothing his fingers over the soft skin of Allen's brow. Allen shivered at the contact, an electric thrill running over his flesh. "I just need to talk to you," the flame-haired man repeated.

"About what?" Allen whispered, his voice shaking and cracking slightly with nervous tension. Lavi didn't reply at first; he just shifted to lie on his back so that his side was pressed firmly against Allen's. His stroking hand moved from Allen's face to tangle in Allen's hair. Lavi tipped his head so that their skulls touched, their faces inches apart. He sighed softly and Allen shuddered again, completely unused to Lavi's strangely sober behavior.

"It's about Kanda," Lavi said after a while.

Allen, grateful to have something to distract himself from the increasingly awkward situation, latched onto Lavi's words like a drowning man to a rope while trying surreptitiously to widen the presently nonexistent gap between his hip and Lavi's muscular thigh. "What about Kanda?"

Lavi squirmed slightly, apparently trying to get more comfortable, curling his long frame around Allen's tense figure. "Well," Lavi modified his previous statements, "it's about _you_ and Kanda."

"Aren't they he same person?" Allen said slowly, his tone implying that he doubted Lavi's mental health. Lavi gazed down at the top of Allen's head with a blank expression, hoping desperately that Allen really was confused and that he wasn't making a rather pathetic pun. Allen seemed oblivious to his own play on words so Lavi, now chuckling quietly, clarified his meaning.

"You," he said, prodding Allen firmly in the center of his chest, "and Kanda. You know, big sword, black hair, and perennially foul expression?"

"Oh. _Oh._"

Lavi laughed delightedly. "You're so cute, Allen," he announced to the world in general as he enfolded the pale-haired boy in a tight embrace. Allen's face turned a scorching crimson and he made an honest attempt at extracting himself from Lavi's arms. "Stop wriggling," Lavi commanded, squeezing Allen's torso like a boa constrictor and squashing his protests through the weight of overwhelming physical contact.

"Of course," Lavi continued conversationally, his grip never slackening. "That's the problem. You, that means _you_, Allen," he prodded Allen in the chest again, "are far too cute for your own good. And that's why Kanda has been so uptight lately: he likes you and he's too chicken shit to do anything about it for fear of destroying his icy, bad-ass reputation."

Allen sagged in Lavi's arms, a queasy feeling of guilt coiling around his heart. "Look, Lavi. I'm really sorry Kanda said all those things to you in the lab today. I-I just..." he trailed off, unsure of where he should go from there.

"Don't worry about it," Lavi told him as he propped his chin on the top of Allen's head. "I shouldn't have confronted him. Besides, he actually showed remarkable self-restraint. Well, for Kanda at least. I thought he was going to cleave me in two with Mugen for a second, but he didn't, and that's always a good sign."

_You have no idea just how close you were to becoming two little Lavis,_ Allen thought, relieved that Lavi seemed to have recovered from Kanda's cruel words. Lavi spoke then, unintentionally echoing Allen's thoughts.

"It really hurt, at first. Kanda's words, I mean. I was mostly surprised, like I said, Kanda usually responds to attacks on his emotional fortress with violence. When he just told me I was irritating it was like getting a knife in the back when you're prepared for a frontal attack." There was a pause in the flow of words and Lavi's visible eye crinkled with laughter at some inner thought. "Linali must have been furious when I ran out like that."

"She was," Allen said fervently and trembled with remembered fear. "She yelled at Kanda about how he was arrogant and a generally awful and inhumane person, and then she yelled at him even more when she had to assign me to be Kanda's replacement partner on the mission, which I still don't know what is. Oh, and she kicked Komui into a wall for being a crass bastard."

At this point, Lavi was chortling madly and pounding one fist on the pillow with glee. Allen watched that fist nervously, but his fears were allayed when Lavi sat up and swung his booted feet off the bed. Allen, glad to finally be freed from Lavi's clutches, sat up quickly as well. Too quickly, really, because his shoulder bumped Lavi in the center of his back and the auburn-haired hammer-wielder, off-balance, fell back toward the mattress. Lavi's cat-like reflexes saved him from face planting into the comforter as he managed to save himself with one hand.

Allen was still a little disoriented by the rapid succession of events, but Lavi was simply distracted by something odd. The hand with which he had checked his abrupt plummet back to the bed was placed firmly on the pocket of Allen's coat, but the truly bizarre thing was the squishy bulge in said pocket.

"What's this?" Lavi questioned energetically; his curiosity knew no bounds. Allen had finally noticed where Lavi's hand was and one horrified thought managed to flit through his conscious before disaster struck. _Oh damn_. Milliseconds later, Lavi had pulled open the pocket and whipped out the cause of the bulge.

Silence fell between them as both boys stared at a pair of brilliantly red boxers.

"Sooooo." Allen blushed as he had never blushed before, but something in Lavi's tone (probably the wicked delight) told him that he wouldn't be getting off the hook so easily. "Why are you carrying boxers around, Allen?"

Allen didn't like the sneaky expression on the hammer-wielding exorcist's face, which, when coupled with his devilish little smile and Allen's knowledge of his true nature, was more than enough to make anyone's blood run cold. "Komurin IX put them in my room," he said quickly, hoping to cut all of Lavi's teasing comments off at the pass. "I was going to send them back to the laundry, and-"

"So you put them in your pocket?" Allen stopped short, having finally realized, thanks to Lavi's interruption, just how weird carrying around an unknown person's boxers was and just how lame and futile his excuse really was. He giggled nervously. Lavi smiled like a Cheshire cat and the hairs on the back of Allen's neck stood up.

"Do you even know who they belong to?" Lavi guessed Allen's problem with uncanny accuracy. At Allen's shame-faced nod, Lavi continued. "You know, if you slept around a little more, you would know what everyone's underwear looked like and you wouldn't have that problem."

"L-Lavi!" Allen protested, his face nearly purple with the depth of his blush.

"Do you want me to tell you whose they are?" Lavi swiftly inserted into the conversation. Allen's mind skittered down a new path, spurred on by the elder exorcist's prior statement. _How many people has Lavi slept with if he knows who the boxers belong to?_ came the unwanted thought. An odd emotion squirmed in Allen's chest just below his heart, but Lavi continued before the white-haired teen had enough time to put a name to that sensation.

"They're mine," Lavi chirped cheerfully.

It took a few seconds for that particular revelation to sink in and Lavi, mistaking Allen's silence for disbelief, hopped of the bed and hooked his thumbs into his belt loops.

"I'll prove it to you if you don't believe me."

"N-no! That's not it!" Allen shrieked, his voice suddenly high-pitched, as he recoiled violently from Lavi's general direction. Lavi's expression turned coy and he fluttered auburn lashes at the other boy.

"What's wrong, Allen? Are you afraid of being all alone with little old me, in my room, on my bed, I might add, at--," Lavi glanced at the clock partially obscured by a rather hideous example of an aboriginal pottery statuette that was waiting to be tagged and placed in storage, "6:00 at night?"

Allen's eyes widened until Lavi could see the white all around the light gray iris. "It's six o' clock _already?_" the boy half-yelled.

Lavi dropped his teasing attitude long enough to ask just why Allen was so concerned about the time, but Allen was already sprinting past him and down the hall, having thrown open the door so fast it had collided with one of the bookshelves.

"Sorry, Lavi!" the little exorcist shouted back over his shoulder. "Kanda only gave me one hour, so I have to be at the boat in--eep!--two minutes!"

"Good luck with Kanda!" Lavi yelled after the fleeing boy's back. Allen didn't hear him; he had already run through the room in which Lavi had found him and was halfway down the narrow corridor. He burst out of the little offshoot and into the main hall with exactly thirty seconds to go before Kanda left him at headquarters and went on the mission alone. His little suitcase was lying forlornly against one wall, having been discarded before Allen followed Timcampy into the spider-web choked corridor. Allen snatched it up and kept on running, down, down, down to the boats, his breath coming in short, ragged pants. He was only five seconds late when he reached the docks because he had sprinted at an inhuman speed for the last few minutes. His booted feet pounded out a rhythm on the wood planking as he rounded the last bend and caught sight on his quarry. Kanda glanced up at him, then untied the last rope and pushed the boat away from the dock. Allen let out a wordless howl of desperation and, having reached the end of the pier, launched himself into space. Less than a second later, the white-haired boy and his small suitcase slammed down into the open boat, setting it rocking. Kanda glared at him; Allen's precipitous entrance had caused the side of the boat to dip low enough for water to splash inside. Allen, for his part, sighed with relief.

"You're late," Kanda informed him in a caustic tone. Allen simply slumped down on the nearest seat gasping for breath. At that moment, the strong current of the underground river caught the prow of the little boat, whisking it and its cargo off into the black tunnel ahead.

* * *

Author's note: Thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter and I apologize for how long it took me to update; my cow is going to give birth soon and I have been dealing with that. And no, that is not an April Fool's joke. Thanks for reading.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: And They All Fall Down

* * *

_Last chapter: Less than a second later, the white-haired boy slammed down into the open boat, setting it rocking. Kanda glared at him; his precipitous entrance had caused the side of the boat to dip low enough for water to splash inside. Allen, for his part, sighed with relief. "You're late," Kanda informed him in a caustic tone. Allen simply slumped down on the nearest seat panting heavily. At that moment, the strong current caught the prow of the little boat, whisking it and its cargo off into the black tunnel ahead._

* * *

It was dark within the tunnel. Very dark. So dark, actually, that Kanda's high-gloss, super-shiny hair wasn't reflecting light the way it usually did, streaming instead over the swordsman's shoulders like an inky veil. Allen gazed at the fall of the raven-dark strands, entranced by the subtle play of black on black each time one of Kanda's movements made the thick mane slide across his broad shoulders. The only sound was the faint lapping of waves caused by the current against the small boat's hull and the occasional grunt of exertion from Kanda, who, with the aid of a long, stout pole, was preventing their vessel from throwing itself to its death against the barely-visible and dangerously rocky sides of the stone passage. Allen couldn't see much else from his position, sprawled out on a hard, low wooden bench, but he found this didn't really disturb him; secretly admiring Kanda's skill at maneuvering in the dark was enough to keep him content. The little exorcist soon found it more and more difficult to remain focused on the other man as the boat's passage, never very smooth to begin with, became rougher and rougher as the current grew swifter and the rocks more frequent. He was jostled heavily from side to side, but through it all, his eyes stayed fixed on Kanda. The swords master stood with one foot braced on each side of the narrow boat, plying the long pole with apparent ease and steering the little vessel around each obstacle. Allen's ears pricked up then, having caught the sound of Kanda's first words since his angry remonstration nearly ten minutes earlier, when Allen had first entered the boat.

"This place is lunatic," the swords master muttered furiously. "We have enough money for that madman to build all of his foolish machines and for all the generals to travel wherever they please, but everyone has to risk injury and death because the Order is so damn cheap that they won't even clear the rocks out of their stream." Allen listened wide-eyed; Kanda would have to be very stressed and most unhappy to one: be swearing, and two: to even be rambling on out loud. Allen was so concentrated on Kanda's behavior that the swordsman's next sharp-spoken words made the white-haired teen at which they were directed jump like a startled deer.

"Bean Sprout!" Kanda growled, his voice made more menacing by the echoes in the tunnel and the fact that he was currently towering over the small boy laying on the bench. "Are you going to get out the lantern, or are you going to wait for us to crash first? Because at the rate we're going, we're going to end up on a rock." Allen obligingly began to fumble around the bottom of the boat in search of the lantern that, according to the stand-offish young man at the front of the boat, should reside somewhere on the deck below the seats that crossed the stern of the boat. The younger boy rummaged under the luggage piled in the back of the vessel, feeling for the cool, hard shape of the requested item. Allen was beginning to feel a little frustrated as his diligent quest found nothing that even resembled a lantern.

"Ano, Kanda?" Allen spoke up, slightly hesitant as he was unsure of how well the other exorcist would take the news. The boat lurched sickeningly to the left and Allen could hear a rock scraping against the hull. Kanda stabbed one end of his pole into the water and punted them sharply to the right. A high, jagged rock passed quickly on the port side of the vessel.

"What is it, Bean Sprout?" Kanda snapped, his fragile patience strained by the difficulty of navigation through rock-infested waters in midnight conditions. Allen swallowed hard and attempted to make himself look smaller by curling up in the stern, _this won't go over well..._

"I can't find the lantern."

There was a long, slow uptake of breath by the Japanese man in the bow of the boat and Allen could almost feel the thick cloud of frustration condense, covering the vessel in a metaphorical dark cloud. _10...9...8..._ Allen began the mental countdown to Kanda's explosion of temper. _7...6...5..._ The white-haired teen could hear the other boy's teeth grinding together. _4...3..._ The younger exorcist never made it to one.

"Look. For. The. Damn. Lantern." Kanda's words were harsh and jerky with rage. Allen was glad that it was too dark in the tunnel for him to see Kanda's face because he was sure that the swordsman's expression was enough to cause a thousand akuma to spontaneously combust with fear, let alone enough to give the smaller boy nightmares. There was more silence for a while as Kanda turned his attention back to the dangerous river and Allen examined the problem with which he was now faced. The younger boy cringed.

"Ano, Kanda?" Allen spoke tremulously as he repeated his earlier words.

"Nnm?" Kanda grunted in reply. Allen braced himself mentally before taking the plunge.

"I'm going to have to crawl through your legs to get to the bow."

The Japanese man stiffened. "You will do no such thing." His voice grated in a passable imitation of the noise Mugen made while clearing its sheath.

"Then you're going to have to steer the boat in the dark," Allen replied in exasperation. There was a lull in the conversation while Kanda considered his options. _Come on, you idiot,_ Allen thought at the swordsman._ You can go along with the plan or you can drown. Is it really such a hard decision?_ The swords master's response was clipped.

"Go around."

"That's not possible. You braced your feet on each side of the boat and I'd fall off if I tried to go around." Allen could see Kanda, who was visible as a dark silhouette against the slightly lighter, if darkness can be lighter, blackness of the tunnel. The swordsman looked tense. At that moment, the boat slammed into a particularly large boulder with a sickening crunch before grinding its way over the stone surface, the wooden planking of the hull groaning and shrieking with the strain. The vessel tipped off the rock with a sudden lurch and, having splashed once more into the water, they continued down the underground river.

"Do it," Kanda said finally, his voice flat but somehow still managing to be laced with disgust. Allen nodded, forgetting that Kanda, who had his back turned towards him, couldn't see him. The white-haired exorcist crawled along the deck toward the hull, grateful that he had at least enough light to see Kanda's vague outline and the edges of the boat. He paused when he reached Kanda. _Oh, damn,_ the cursed boy thought. _I forgot that Kanda's uniform jacket is so long._ Allen hesitated for a few seconds, then stretched out his red-skinned, cursed hand and grasped the bottom hem of the other teen's coat. He gulped, his nervous hand clenching the fabric so tightly that it was a wonder that even its reinforced material didn't tear, and lifted the black jacket slowly. Pale gray eyes widened.

Allen had thought that Lavi's boot were modern, but even those six-strapped wonders had nothing on the black leather footgear before his very startled eyes. Slick leather smoothed up Kanda's legs and, though Allen couldn't see them well in the dark, he was sure that they would shine in the light. The buckles on the boots, and there were really too many to count, gleamed dully at him from the many straps binding the thick leather to the exorcist's legs. What seemed oddest to Allen was that he couldn't see the tops of those boots. Curious, Allen hoisted the edge of the swordsman's uniform jacket up to reveal the backs of Kanda's knees. Sleek leather met his interested eyes. _How high do these boots go? _Allen wondered.

"What are you doing, Bean Sprout?" Kanda's voice carried a sharp warning. Allen froze guiltily, much like a small child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The cursed boy found himself thankful for the obscuring darkness once more as it concealed the rush of blood to the exorcist's pale cheeks.

"I-I'm looking for... the... lantern?" Allen mentally kicked himself. _There's no way Kanda will believe that. I don't even sound like I believe that. I sound more like I'm hoping that he will believe that I believe that, which is ironic because that's kind of what I'm hoping for right about now. _Fortunately, Kanda was distracted by the timely appearance of several enormous boulders and, as the boat bobbed and jolted through the resulting cataracts like a drunken rubber duck in a rambunctious child's bath, the swordsman only had time for one short command.

"The lantern. Now."

Following Kanda's instruction, Allen focused once more on the task at hand: crawling through/over/around all obstacles to reach the bow of the boat. He managed, with some difficulty, to wrench his eyes from the elder man's boots, and began to scramble forward awkwardly, gaining distance inch by inch. As soon as his head was under the uniform coat, Allen found he had to release the hem in order to make further progress. He did so and trembled slightly as the heavy material stroked across the back of his neck and shoulders. _Focus,_ Allen chided himself, his eyes fixed on the ankle of Kanda's left boot. The white-haired teen discovered that his head was turning of its own volition and his pale gray gaze swept up over Kanda's ankle, over the buckles liberally coating his calf, across the thick leather at his knee, up to mid-thigh--_No, no!_ Allen hurriedly dropped his gaze to the uncaring deck below his hands and knees. He crawled stiffly, every muscle tense, Kanda's coat trailing teasingly over his back. There was a moment of consternation when Allen found his broad shoulders trapped between Kanda's parted knees, but the younger boy wiggled bravely onward until he was halfway done with his low-to-the-ground journey between the swords master's legs. _Almost there, _he thought with relief.

Allen glanced up just as Kanda glanced down. Even in the dark, Kanda's deep blue stare was unnerving in its ability to pierce to the soul. Time slowed to a crawl as Allen turned his body halfway to meet the gimlet gaze directly. The cursed boy felt naked there in the pitch black tunnel; he felt as though all of his defenses, all of his thoughts, all of his control had been stripped away, leaving behind only tangled emotions trapped in a fleshy prison. Their eyes never shifted away and Allen could feel confusion and fear and nervous tension building inside of him in a potent and heady combination. He cleared his parched throat in order to tell the older exorcist to go back to work, to do anything that would break the ephemeral connection between them, but he found that his voice caught and all he managed to croak was a single word, "Kanda--," and his search for the lantern, Allen's last, tenuous grip on reality was lost.

It was as though some omnipotent force, neither good nor ill, but both at the same time, was manipulating the cursed exorcist as the younger boy completed his journey through Kanda's legs and rose to his knees in front of the elder boy, never breaking eye-contact. A tortured, red-skinned hand fluttered up to rest on the swordsman's black-clad hip and still pale gray could not pull away from the terrifying attraction of bottomless blue. Allen's breath died in his lungs.

_So this is what it's like to drown,_ he thought as his vision began to blacked and blur. Allen's body drooped slightly and began to fall, but his collapse was arrested by a sudden, jerking force. Kanda's calloused hand was twisted in the loose fabric of the collar of Allen's uniform, holding the limp exorcist up.

"What--?" was all Allen could manage to say, incoherent as it was. His confused eyes dropped to examine the protecting hand, then lifted wearily to search Kanda's face. One pale, trembling hand stretched out like a plea for salvation as some vast painful chasm made itself known in the depths of Allen's heart and--

Kanda staggered as the small vessel smashed into an unseen rock. The planking of the deck gave a terrible scream and long splinters lifted itself out of its once-smooth surface. The boulder grated under the boats hull as the tiny craft, propelled ever onward by the powerful current, shot across before slewing wildly sideways as the stone was left behind. Frigid water splashed in as the bow dipped, soaking the white-haired boy. Kanda, who Allen had never seen do anything that could truly be called ungraceful, stumbled again. His booted feet tangled in the carry-strap of one of the many pieces of luggage dislodged from their original positions to slide about the deck. The rushing current hurled the boat over another rock in what was apparently a series of rapids and Kanda's feet slid out from underneath him, sending the elder exorcist sprawling to pile heavily down onto Allen.

The swordsman attempted to regain his footing and the little vessel impacted with another rock with jarring force. Kanda collapsed onto the white-haired boy once more and pain ripped through him like white-hot lightning as his elbow met the deck just left of Allen's head and Mugen's hilt jabbed into his lower chest. There was a wet, meaty crunch.

Allen struggled with the sudden weight covering his body until it uttered and odd sort of half-scream and went limp over him. The cursed exorcist could feel something warm and liquid dripping down onto his face, and the tip of his pink tongue slipped out to taste the substance that stained his lips. The salty-sweet tang of copper and iron filled his mouth and Allen panicked. _Blood._

Allen thrashed about until his hand connected solidly with a sturdy square shape. _Well, that's ironic, _an inner voice, still remarkably calm given the circumstances, bitched. _Isn't it funny that we find what we want when it's too late for it to be useful?_ The boat thumped and jostled over several more stones accompanied by the piercing squeal of stressed timbers before the water flattened out and became calm. The battered vessel's progress was suddenly smooth and serene, the roaring of the rapids slowly diminishing as the driving force of the river shunted them along further and further away from the wild cataracts. With worried hands Allen shifted Kanda's boneless weight off his chest and lit the now-located lantern. Pale golden light stretched ethereal fingers out over the little boat, bringing touches of color to the sheer rock walls and the shimmering water. The cursed exorcist turned back from the lantern to gaze fretfully at the crumpled body of the raven-haired swordsman, readying himself for a cruel and awful realization. His expectations were met, to say the least.

Frothy bubbled dyed crimson and foamy-pink dribbled from Kanda's slightly-parted lips with each of his ragged, wheezing breaths. The fallen exorcist's right arm lay bent at an unnatural angle and there was no doubt in Allen's mind that it was broken in at least one place. Kanda gasped, his back arching off the deck and his harsh pants rattling in his throat, and Allen's eyes were drawn from Kanda's mangled limb to his torso. All of Allen's breath whooshed out of him in disbelief. The swordsman's stomach was even flatter than normal, giving it a collapsed look that can only be achieved by shattering at least a few ribs. The white-haired teen ran a hand tentatively across the other's chest in an attempt to asses the extent of the damage to his rib-cage and was horrified when several ribs shifted and grated under the weight of his feather-light touch. Kanda groaned and coughed, thick flecks of blood splattering his chin.

Allen felt the bottom fall out of his stomach and the ache just under his heart returned. With he lantern swinging wildly in one hand, the frightened boy dug desperately through his suitcase for something that could be used as a bandage. Unnoticed by him, the current, always strong and swift, grew even more intense, hurtling itself headlong toward its destination at the foot of the mountain. Soft rumbling sounded in the poorly lit gloom in front of the vessel, growing louder as the boat was carried downstream. Distracted by the other teen's plight, Allen remained oblivious to the mounting danger until it was too late. The far-off noise of the river was suddenly a shuddering, palpable force that throbbed in Allen's ears and with one last heaving buck, the small boat tipped over the edge of the here-to-fore unseen falls.

The bow of the boat plunged downward as the little vessel shot out into empty space. Allen shrieked like a little girl as the luggage broke free from its constraints, lifting away from the planking of the deck as the boat dropped out from underneath them. Kanda's limp form also flopped up off the deck, a fine trail of blood tracing a line of ruby droplets from the wounded exorcist's lips. Allen found himself tumbling head-first as the boat rolled over in midair.

_Oh, shit,_ was the last thought that flitted through the mind of the smaller boy before he struck the icy cold, subterranean water with the same crushing impact of a wreaking ball hitting a building, sending him deep into the water in a cloud of bubbles. He was joined in his cold bath soon after by the overturned boat, which finally splintered beyond all repair, ending chunks of wood flying out over the surface of the water. The luggage plopped down like a flock of ducks and in the middle of it all, the prone body of the black-haired exorcist splashed down.

Allen thrashed about madly, clawing his way to the surface. Dank cave air poured into his starved lungs as he sucked breath greedily. The larger remains of the boat bobbed up some yards away, followed by the luggage, which swirled in the eddies at the base of the falls, meandering like lost sheep. The white-haired boy leaned back in the water, floating to conserve his precious energy. The frigid water leeched the heat from his bones and chilled him to the core. Pale grey eyes gazed blearily out across the water.

_Something's missing,_ the younger exorcist thought muzzily, still dazed from his precipitous dive into the underground lake.

"Allen-san!" a voice floated out over the lake. Allen struggled around to face in the direction of the voice. His now-clear eyes settled on the Finder standing on a familiar harbor. "Allen-san," the Finder repeated. "Kanda-san hasn't come up yet!"

Fear sent adrenaline rushing through Allen's veins once more. He searched the surface frantically for any sign of the ill-tempered swordsman, for the merest glimpse of raven hair or pale skin. Nothing. There was nothing, not even a lingering ripple where he had submerged. Finally, ignoring the painful knot of fear that balled low in his chest and disregarding the increasingly worried shouts of the Finder, Allen rolled over and dove, arrowing down into the chill embrace of the deep water. The cursed boy turned his head this way and that as his pale gray eyes strove to pierce the gloom that lay heavy in the water. And still there was nothing, only terribly empty space, broken in but one place where a faint flickering gathered at the edge of his vision. Allen pushed on through the silken weight of pure river water, feeling his limbs grow stiff and clumsy with cold, searching-- _Wait. Flickering? _He whirled in a stream of tiny silver bubbles. _There it is again!_ Something silver and small--no bigger than the palm of one of his hands--was settling slowly to the murky bottom. Its path was straight and unwavering, an odd phenomena in the troubled and turbulent waters of the harbor at the base of the falls. Then the silver plate caught the light of an errant beam of light, likely from the Finder's lantern, and flared to vivid, glorious fire, appearing like a radiant star in the dark lake.

_A cross. A Black Order insignia. But it's falling so heavily..._ Allen jerked and released several large bubbles of his precious air in surprise when he realized why the badge moved the way it did. _It's still attached to Kanda._ Sure enough, when he looked closer there was, indeed, a darker shadow in the cloudy water.

The cursed exorcist swan toward the shimmering silver light in eccentric arcs, buffeted this way and that by the capricious currents. As he drew closer, the white-haired teen could see the slow rippling of Kanda's long coat, the other boy's pale face with his eyes closed as if asleep, and the snake-like undulations of the inky tendrils of hair that had pulled free from the swordsman's pony-tail to flutter around his motionless visage. The black-haired boy fell through the restless waters like liquid mercury, heavy and fluid, one limp hand trailing up to the surface more than ten feet above. A fine line of bloodied water stood out lividly against the dark blue, marking his descent.

Allen could feel his lungs burning with the desire to breathe, could hear his own heart pounding in his chest, could see the darkness of oxygen deprivation encroaching on the edges of his failing vision, but he pushed all of these nagging concerns from his mind. With one last eel-like wriggle, the white-haired exorcist occupied the space only an arm's length from the other boy's limp form. A cursed, red-skinned hand reached out, snagging the hem of the swords master's uniform and arresting the body's fall. A powerful kick from Allen sent them rocketing up in a stream of bubbles that was the last of Allen's lungful of air. They broke the surface in a rush of cold water and Allen rolled to float on his back once more, this time pillowing Kanda's dark head on his shoulder as he towed the unresponsive teen toward the dock and the Finder.

What seemed like ages later, Allen and his limp charge fetched up against the pier and the Finder's strong hands hoisted both boys out of the water. Allen lay Kanda down carefully on the wide wooden planking of the dock, brushing sodden raven hair away from the blank face. The Finder settled two fingers on Kanda's neck just below his jaw. There was a pregnant pause as the Finder bent to lay his ear on the swordsman's broad chest.

"Nothing. He's not breathing," came the Finder's strained voice.

"No!" Allen shouted, shoving the Finder out of the way so that he could check for himself, to prove once and for all that it was some horrible joke. No reassuring pulse met his questing fingers; no breath rose and fell under his desperate hands. "No!" he exclaimed again, his words sounding like the agonized moans of a widow denying the loss of her husband. Hot tears welled up in his clear gray eyes as his clenched fists slammed down on the other boy.

"Allen-san!" choked the surprised Finder.

Allen ignored him, pressing instead his hands down over Kanda's heart and pumping rhythmically. The Finder gripped his shoulders tightly and tried to pull him away, but the distraught exorcist batted away his hands.

"There's no use--," the Finder began, but Allen cut him off quickly.

"HE'S NOT DEAD!" the white-haired exorcist howled, a little foam pooling at one corner of his lips and all sanity gone from his eyes. "This bastard can't die from something stupid like that!" The Finder recoiled as if struck, repelled by the madness in the slender exorcist's expression. Allen resumed pounding on Kanda's chest with single-minded determination. The cursed teen paused to listen for any breath and when none came he acted without thinking, pinching the swordsman's nose shut and sealing his lips over the other boy's. Allen felt Kanda's chest rise under his hands with the force of the breath driven into his lungs and he drew back to push at the still body once more. Seconds ticked by as the scene played itself out over and over again; the Finder watching in mute despair and Allen working like a madman to breathe for Kanda and to restart his motionless heart. Seven, eight, nine times Allen met Kanda's lips with his own. Then, scant minutes after they had emerged from the harbor's clutches, Allen leaned down and gave Kanda his breath for the tenth time.

Hands like iron bands clamped down on the white-haired teen's upper arms and shoved him away. Allen, now sprawled on the dock, looked up just as bottomless blue-grey eyes opened. Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds before Kanda rolled onto his belly and poured out the contents of his stomach. Shakily, Allen crawled to his side and, kneeling, held back the soaked, inky strands of hair from the swordsman's face. There was silence as Kanda retched and heaved, vomiting up bloody water. The elder exorcist's body shuddered and trembled like a newborn kitten's and Allen waited quietly, supporting the uncharacteristically weak teen until the throes subsided. Having calmed, Kanda allowed himself to rest against the cursed teen's body, to be held up by another's arms, if only for a moment. Finally, Kanda made as if to raise himself to his feet, but fell back into Allen's embrace quaking and clutching his right arm to his wounded chest.

"Help!" Allen snapped at the Finder who watched some distance away. The man nodded dumbly and withdrew a medical kit from the large pack strapped to his back. Allen gently divested Kanda of the upper half of his uniform, beginning with the broad white belt that encircled the boy's narrow waist. Once removed, Mugen was set gently and reverently aside and Allen's nimble fingers stripped the long coat from Kanda's battered frame. The younger exorcist and the Finder both stared in shocked horror. A bruise easily the size of two spread hands bloomed deep purple on the fair skin covering the left hand of Kanda's ribcage. Smaller, slightly paler bruises mottled the rest of his flesh, except for just below Kanda's right elbow where a band of broken blood vessels had created a hematoma just as dark and ugly as the one over his ribs. Even as they watched, though, the minor bruises faded and Kanda's breathing eased. Allen's eyes were drawn to the thick black rune over Kanda's heart, its black ink stark against both the pale skin at his shoulder and the bruised flesh just below. Unconsciously, the red-skinned hand with the cross deeply embedded in its back reached up to touch the center of the strange tattoo. Kanda's left hand closed painfully around Allen's curious appendage and the white-haired teen withdrew it hastily, swiftly choosing to occupy himself with binding Kanda's rapidly healing chest. The Finder wrapped and splinted the swordsman's broken arm after resetting the fractured bone, drawing a hissed curse from Kanda. When the swordsman was bandaged appropriately, the three sat without speaking until Allen gave voice to the question that had been bothering him for some time now.

"What happened?" he asked the Finder. "We ended up in the same place we usually do, but the river and the passage wasn't the same."

"There was a miscommunication," the Finder explained, sounding almost guilty. "Komui ordered us to close the normal passage for maintenance because he didn't know Linali had dispatched you two. We didn't know either. The channel you came down was never meant to be navigated; it's just an overflow channel to keep the upper harbor, your departure point, from flooding when the normal one is blocked. Both passages end up at the base of the Black Order's mountain and in this harbor, but, as you saw, the overflow channel ends in a waterfall." The Finder grimaced slightly.

Allen's aura pulsed darkly and his hands crooked into claws. "I'm going to kill that bastard," he ground out through clenched teeth, rising with the cherished intent of marching up to the science department to find and strangle Komui.

"Yes...well..." the Finder muttered awkwardly and hesitantly, as though he was considering how best to break some unpleasant news without getting himself injured or killed by the rather emotional exorcist. "Komui called," he indicated the phone attached to his bulky pack. "He said that another Finder vanished and, when the other Finders went looking for him, they found all of the missing men. They were dead. We can't reestablish contact with them for some reason; their golem is probably broken. He, Komui that is, also said that you two are the only two exorcists currently available since he assigned another mission to Lavi and Linali. You two have to go no matter what happens...er...happened. Those are his words, not mine," he added hastily.

Allen stared at him with his jaw agape in disbelief. "You want us to go on a mission with Kanda injured, our supplies ruined, and everything else we packed soaking wet?" The Finder looked sheepish and uncomfortable and Allen prepared to crucify him on the cross of reason with the aid of his Innocence when Kanda spoke for the first time since the beginning of the ordeal.

"The mission is our greatest priority right now. You," he commanded, pointing one long finger at the Finder while draping his still-wet uniform coat over his broad shoulders. "Gather the luggage."

"_What?_" Allen yelled, goggling at the other teen. Kanda gazed at him over one shoulder as the Finder moved to retrieve the bobbing luggage. The swordsman half-turned to face him and the shoulder he was looking over dropped aggressively.

"Our mission is the most important issue at the moment," the raven-haired exorcist stated slowly and calmly in the same way one would speak to a rather slow child, clearly annoyed at having to repeat his earlier words.

"But you're hurt!" Allen argued, certain that this irrefutable logic would at least slow the mighty and dutiful machine that was Kanda. This was obviously the wrong thing to say because the swords master, if possible, became even more aggressive, having been forced into a conversational defensive.

"Are you saying that I am incapable of completing this mission?" came the older exorcist's voice, his tones as dulcet and sweet as honey poured over a sword's blade.

"No!" garbled Allen in a rush.

"Then you're saying we should give up this mission simply because our_ luggage_ is wet" With those words dangling in the air between them like a thousand wasps, Allen became acutely aware of the impossibility of winning the argument. The Finder watched the two exorcists out of the corners of his eyes with interest. Sighing, the white-haired boy lowered his head and conceded defeat.

"I suppose we'd better hurry if we don't want to miss the train." Kanda's only response to this statement was a sneer so scathing it could have peeled not only paint from the walls, but the very fabric of wall-ness itself from its earthly confines, leaving behind only the ghost of a not-wall. Allen felt like slapping him.

The Finder approached them slowly, laden with dripping equipment. Kanda took a single bag and slung it over his shoulder, taking care not to bump his healing arm. Pale grey eyes noted the swordsman's slight flinch as the bag bumped gently against his bandaged ribs. _So it still hurts, doesn't it, you bastard?_ came Allen's uncontrollable thought, his inner self jigging wildly with wicked and purely sadistic glee. The smaller boy grabbed a rather large amount of luggage and, having distributed its weight as equally as possible about his person, trotted after Kanda, who had immediately after replacing Mugen on his hip with his white belt. The finder trailed along behind.

Several moments passed of steady loping and Allen entered the city that sprawled roughly a mile from the harbor at the base of the Black Order headquarters. He caught sight of Kanda some blocks ahead and sped up. The Finder swore softly and followed. Side-by-side the white-haired and black-hared exorcists leapt onto the rooftops, hopping from building to building with easy grace. The shape of the train overpass began to resolve itself in the darkness until, with one final jump, the Black Order trio landed on top of it. A passenger train was hurtling by underneath.

Kanda turned and, shooting on last unbearably arrogant smirk in Allen's direction, walked off the edge of the overpass to fall into the night air. Booted feet thudded down onto the top of the passenger car and several of the passengers screamed.

Allen twitched with indignation at the fact that, by a gross and unexpected twist of fate, it was he, not Lavi, partnered with Kanda for this mission. It was then, as the white-haired exorcist and Finder plunged toward the train that Allen realized,_ I still don't really know what this mission is about._

* * *

Hi, everybody! I'm really sorry that it took so long for me to get this chapter out and I'm well aware that I lied to at least one person about how soon I would post it. I semi-humbly ask your forgiveness. A lot of things happened that I wasn't really expecting. Anyway, the next chapter is already halfway done. I'm not making any promises about when I'll post it though because I invariably end up lying.

On a more important note: I have decided that for the purposes of this story, Allen will be 17 and Kanda 19. You'll see why later (get your mind out of the gutter. I know what you're thinking, and it's not like that. Kinda).

Until Later.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Train Ride to Perdition

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_Last Chapter: Kanda turned and, shooting one last unbearably arrogant look in Allen's direction, walked off the edge of the overpass to fall into the night air. Booted feet slammed into the top of the passenger car and several passengers screamed. Allen twitched with indignation at the fact that, by a gross twist of fate, it was he, not Lavi, partnered with Kanda for this mission. It was then, as the white-haired exorcist and Finder plunged toward the train, that Allen realized; I still don't know what this mission is about._

_

* * *

_

Seconds after his rather belated realization bath exorcists and the Finder had their feet planted firmly, if such a word could apply, on the slick metal roofing of a passenger car and were listening to the consternated shouting of the travelers inside. Allen sighed; it seemed that, no matter how many times an exorcist had descended from on high to dent the roofs, the porters and waiters of the train companies saw no reason to give advance warning to the ticket-holders. He never had the opportunity to follow through on that particular train of thought because he became self-consciously aware of two sets of eyes boring into his oblivious form. Allen blinked at his comrades blankly and was rewarded with a veritable spasm of frustrated impatience from Kanda.

"Are you_ stupid_, Bean Sprout?" the obnoxious swordsman snarled. "You're closest to the hatch. Are you going to open it so we can get in, or are you just going to stare at us until we do it ourselves?"

Allen batted his lashes thickly for a few seconds while his mind, still distracted, struggled to process the new information. His pale gray eyes turned downward and a small corner of his brain took note of the heavy steel trap-door and latch. "Oh," was all he said as a pale rosy blush dusted itself across his cheeks. A vein sprang to angry life on the other exorcist's brow and one of his claw-like hands reached in the direction of Mugen's leather-bound hilt, but before Kanda had the time to do something rash and quite possibly dangerous, Allen bent over and applied himself with simple but diligent concentration to the task of opening the hatch. A few minutes later, the Black Order disciples had reached a rather unhappy conclusion: the trap-door, which had allowed the entrance of so many exorcists before them, was welded shut._ I guess the train companies did do something about us disturbing the passengers all the time, _Allen thought and would have been amused if he hadn't been standing on a plate of metal twelve feet above the ground and moving at around fifty miles-per-hour. He examined the hatch again, his eyes following the smooth, nearly invisible seam of welded metal that traced the around the edges of the only entrance, then glanced back up at his two compatriots. The Finder seemed to have accepted the fact stoically and had resigned himself to the worst. Kanda, on the other hand, had the manic, fixed expression generally seen on the face of a religious zealot when faced with a heathen non-believer, and the carefully banked fiery rage in his dark blue-grey eyes promised the entire world in general that, if the hatch didn't open in the near future, say, the next two seconds, the entire train car was going to become, suddenly and irreversible, convertible. Allen had seen that look before: about two seconds before the mercurial swordsman sheared a level-2 akuma into two perfectly equal halves.

"Ano, Kanda?" Allen began worriedly. "I really don't think that cutting a hole in the top of the car-"

"Is exactly what I'm going to do," came Kanda's implacable tones, the finality of the words giving even death a run for its money.

"No, wait--!" Allen cried out, but Mugen was already half-buried in the steel roof. The passengers began screaming in earnest as the blade tore through the thick metal as though it was paper with a noise like the howl of a tortured cat. A perfectly circular plate of roof fell into the compartment with a ringing metallic clang. Kanda sheathed Mugen reverently then dropped into the car. The Finder and Allen exchanged worried looks and followed with the intent of behaving as damage control. Inside, Kanda was brushing flecks of metal dust off of the shoulders of his coat--_that's amazing,_ Inner Allen burbled, _he never put it on and yet it is still there--_and a nervous porter was trying to explain just why it was unacceptable to have exorcists dropping through unexpected holes in the ceiling like ripe fruit. Allen intervened because he felt that, if he didn't, the porter was going to take on the same appearance as the roof: that is, more hole than person.

"Excuse me, sir," the cursed boy interjected in the slight pause in the porter's monologue created by the man's inescapable need to breathe. "We have a reservation." The little man puffed and sputtered like an overblown bag pipe until finally some words were discernable.

"Be as that may--_puff, puff_--there is no excuse--_cough, wheeze_--for cutting holes in the ceiling!"

"The hatch. It was locked." Kanda's words were frigid enough to put a glacier to shame. Their effect: the porter's jaw snapped shut with an audible click and the little man scurried out of the car in an impressively accurate impression of a fleeing rat.

"We'll show ourselves to our compartment!" Allen called after him. Kanda just _humph-_ed and marched off in the direction of the first-class cars with the more sensitive exorcist and the Finder trailing along behind.

They settled into the plush compartment uncomfortably; their clothes were still wet and were sticking and chafing awfully. Allen sat gingerly on the very edge of his seat so that the fabric covering the backs of his legs would dry out more quickly. The silence between the trio lengthened and became, for two of them at least, more awkward. The Finder cleared his throat softly before sending out careful words to break the still air and to tread on the perilous and much-debated grounds of social civility.

"I'm afraid we've never been properly introduced," the white-clad man small talked. "My name is Samuel, but everyone calls me Sam--." The man seemed oblivious of the fact that Kanda had no interest in listening and that Allen had zoned out, choosing to focus on his own thoughts, which centered on the other, more acerbic exorcist. _How on earth did he keep that coat from falling off his shoulders when it's just hanging there with nothing to hold it up? His arms aren't even in the sleeves. Maybe he hooked it under his sward belt. No, no coat under there. Just skin. And muscle. A nice, flat, toned stomach...I didn't just think that, did I? No, no, of course not. He's just another exorcist. He probably got those muscles and that trim figure from working with Mugen. I mean, wielding a sword like that must be hard..._ Allen shook himself lightly in an attempt to warn himself away from those dangerous thoughts. _I wonder how he manages to wield his sword with that broken arm? Something that long h to be unwieldy and heavy--_at this point Allen groaned in horror. _I'm helpless._

Just then, the cursed exorcist noticed that the steady background drone of the Finder's voice had ceased. He glanced up to figure out what was going on. Both Kanda and the Finder--_what's his name again? Oh, yeah, Sam_--were giving him an odd look. Allen stared back in confusion.

"Is there something wrong, Allen-san?" Sam queried, his tone implying that, yes, there was.

"No, nothing," Allen assured him. Samuel spared him one last concerned glance before continuing with what he had been saying earlier.

"So, we just have to stay on this train for approximately ten more hours and then its just two or three hours on foot to the estate. I think you'd both be more comfortable if you let your clothes dry out. If you take them off, I'll hang them to dry above the fire in the boiler car." Allen looked stunned. He opened his mouth to protest when Kanda's wet uniform coat slopped onto the seat next to him. _Oh, please tell me he's not--_Allen prayed fervently. A leather boot skidded across the floor, sloshing noisily and spreading a puddle of water, to join the jacket. Horrified, Allen looked up at Kanda and regretted it immediately. Kanda was slouched low in his seat, a look of mild concentration usurping the usual scowl on his face. His chest was bare and shimmering with the droplets of water that fell from the thick stands of midnight hair like stars from the firmament. The flesh of his belly and lower ribs was mercifully hidden by the bandages the white-haired boy had used to wrap the Japanese boy's mostly healed ribs, but his pants had slid down to cling to his narrow hips and his sword-belt was lower still, revealing a strip of lightly-bronzed skin. And the pants--ah, the pants. It seemed that the sleek, thigh-high boots that had sheathed Kanda's long legs only moments ago didn't leave much room for pants underneath. As a result, the black fabric left to cover the swordsman's legs now that the boots were gone was revealed to be very thin and very, very tight. The only thing keeping them from descending into the realm of positively indecent was the thick white belt supporting Mugen, which rode low on his hips or high on his thighs, depending on how one chose to look at it. Allen couldn't bring himself to breathe as Kanda shucked off his other boot, his skilled hands tracing the contours of his muscular leg as he peeled of the leather. The cursed exorcist swallowed hard, his mouth dry, and the boot landed with a soft thump next to its mate.

"Are you sure you are well?" the voice of the Finder pulled Allen out of his Kanda-induced haze.

"Y-Yes!" the flustered teen gasped and began fumbling with the clasps of his own hooded cloak. It joined Kana's in a sodden heap of black and silver. Allen's little neck-tie and white shirt followed soon after. Goosebumps sprang up when the cool air of the train compartment kissed his already-chilled, damp flesh.The smaller exorcist's hands hesitated on the buckle of his pants until Kanda shot him a challengingly arch look.

"So modest," the foul-dispositioned teen mocked lightly. Allen glared at him and stripped out of his wet trousers, leaving himself clad only in his black cotton boxers. He wasn't sure what he was most embarrassed of at this point; the fact that everyone could see his cursed arm with its bloody red skin, something he'd always been ashamed of, or the fact that he was wearing only his boxers in a public place. He blushed, and stormy blue eyes assessed him critically.

"I guess those weren't your boxers after all," Kana remarked in a suspiciously mild tone, his voice still managing to be a sultry purr of suppressed laughter. Allen glared again, unable to think of a snappy comeback.

"Would you like me to dry your pants, too, Kanda-san?" Sam asked patiently while waiting for the two exorcists to stop bickering.

"No," Kanda said flatly.

"So modest," Allen quipped, parroting back the Japanese teen's earlier words while grinning triumphantly. _Bastard. Let's see you get out of that!_ Inner Allen howled while doing a victory jig. Kanda's face went blank and he stared at the white-haired young man for a while. Than he stood and hooked one thumb into the waistband of those tight pants. The belt still rode low over his hips. One dark brow quirked suggestively and the blue-eyed beauty slowly eased the edge down to expose the smooth skin just below his right hip, then stopped. Allen frowned and gazed at the now rather large patch of flesh between then the other boy's pants and the bandages.

"Too shy to take those pants off?" Allen grinned at the other exorcist, sticking to his guns even though something was telling him that all was not well. Kanda's expression registered nonplussed surprise. The elder exorcist heaved a theatrical sigh and slid the hem down another inch or so. Allen's smooth brow wrinkled in thought. _Why isn't he rising to the bait? And why isn't he just giving up the pants? _His eyes remained focused on the pale skin. _Wait a minute... Shouldn't there be...something...underneath...?_ Allen turned his back so quickly that his now-bare heel got a friction burn from the train compartment's smooth floor. Kanda could see that the tips of the younger teen's ears and the entirety of the back of his neck were scorchingly red, set off nicely by the rosy tint that brushed across the pale exorcist's shoulders.

"Ah," Samuel said in the awkward quiet. "That was unexpected. And with that, the Finder swept from the compartment with an armful of wet clothing to join the rest of the already-drying luggage. Allen, who still had his back to the unabashed swordsman, could hear Kanda sink down onto his seat. A faint rattle told the cursed boy that Mugen had been moved.

"Are you going to stand there forever?" came Kanda's disinterested tones. Allen jumped slightly and folded himself rather ungracefully into the seat opposite the aloof teen, as far from the other boy as possible in the train compartment. Even in the first-class cars there was only so much room available. Kanda was sitting with his legs crossed at the knee and held Mugen at an angle across his chest. Wet black hair, shining like ink, spilled over his shoulder and was dripping steadily on Kanda's thigh. _That can't be nearly as comfortable as he pretends, _Allen thought, eyeing the other teen suspiciously. _If he laid across the seats he could drape his hair over the edge so it dripped on the floor. _The cursed teen paused in his thinking momentarily to visualize that idea. _Yes. Because that's ever going to happen._ As if in response to his thoughts, Kanda squirmed minutely and moved his hair over his other shoulder, then uncrossed his legs to slouch down on the seat so that his chin rested on his chest, his rump sat on the very edge of the seat, and his knees spread shoulder-width apart. The swordsman's eyes fluttered shut. Allen gulped. The white belt was getting tantalizingly close to sliding off those sharply angled hips.

_Change the subject, change the subject, _Allen whimpered frantically. _Hah!_ "So, Kanda?" the younger teen chirped. "Our mission. What is it?" A single dark eye slitted open and fixed him with a baleful gaze.

"Don't you read?" The swords master rumbled without moving. Allen sweat dropped and chuckled nervously.

"Well, I was going to read it on the train, so I packed it in the bag. And...Um...you know how the bags got wet?" Allen pulled a bedraggled dossier out from behind the seat and proffered it to Kanda. The folder fell open, revealing page after page of crinkled, ripped, ink stained text. "It's not really in any condition to be read." Kanda stared at him for a while longer, then closed his eyes firmly once more to ignore the other boy. "So you're not going to tell me?" Allen's voice was somewhere between desperately hysterical and bloody furious.

"Nn," was the response. Allen had the vivid image of himself squeezing Kanda with his activated Innocence until the swordsman's head popped off like the top of an overcooked sausage. The compartment door slid open and the white-haired boy, not willing to waste a perfectly good glare, turned his expression on to the unwelcome intruder. The porter--_that's the same man Kanda frightened off earlier_, his memory supplied--flinched.

"Iwasjustwonderingifyouwanteddinner," the porter's words tumbled out in an unintelligible rush. Kanda's eyes opened long enough to cast a baleful stare at the man; apparently Kanda hadn't forgotten who the man was, either. Allen just blinked slowly at the cowering man-rat.

"Excuse me?" Allen said after a while when it became clear that the porter was waiting for some sort of an answer.

"Its 8:30 and the dinner service is going to close soon. Your reservations include meals and I was sent to ask if you wanted anything off the menu." The trembling man proffered the menu like a peace offering. Allen opened it and studied its contents.

"Yes, I'd like to have--"

"Soba. And tea."

The cursed teen sighed; Kanda only had manners when he felt like it, and it seemed that this was not one of those times. The nervous porter scrawled the raven-haired boy's order on a little scrap of paper procured from an unseen pocket, then turned to Allen.

"I'd like chicken alfredo, lasagna, curry, and two dim sum," the younger exorcist listed slowly. The porter nodded and made as if to leave. "Wait! I'm not done yet!" Allen protested. The paper reappeared in the man's hand. "Also, clam chowder, a ceaser salad, a slice each of the chocolate and raspberry cheesecakes, and a hot chocolate. And a slice of apple pie. With ice cream. And some rolls. And a baked potato," he added as an afterthought. Eyes bulging slightly, the man turned and left the compartment with almost unseemly haste.

The white-haired teen glanced at Kanda. The Japanese exorcist had rearranged himself sometime during Allen's order and he was now wedged into the corner of the compartment with his legs stretched out on the seats. He looked like he could stay there for an eternity, if need be.

"So. About the mission..." Allen prodded gently. Kanda's toes curled slightly. "Sam said that a lot of Finders died. This train is going to northern England. Would you care to explain the connection between those two details?" The older exorcist's foot twitched. "No, huh?"

Allen leaned back in his seat and stared out the window at the vague shapes that flitted by in the dark like ghosts. Haunting, aching silence stretched out in his soul, unfurling toward infinity in a dazzle of every color and none at all. The cursed teen's eyes rolled up and he fainted, his head bouncing off the glass with an ugly crack.

Kanda sat up quickly, disturbed from his reverie by the unexpected noise and deep blue eyes cut to the other boy. The white-haired boy lay crumpled on the carpeted floor of the compartment, his limbs spamming slightly from the strength of the blow to his head. The Japanese teen bit off a curse and rushed to his side. He racked his mind for any knowledge relating to women and how to revive them from their thrice-damned fainting spells. Kanda swiftly came to the conclusion that he might, perhaps, benefit from more social interaction and, just as rapidly, discarded it. Seconds later he hit mental gold and fanned the unconscious boy with one hand. Allen stirred faintly and squirmed in Kanda's general direction. The swordsman's eyebrow twitched and he gritted his teeth. One hand slapped down on Allen's right cheek with a resounding pop. Pale grey eyes fluttered open and met Kanda's belligerent stare. The white-haired teen blinked disorientedly.

"What happened?" Allen slurred. Kanda lost his temper and slapped the newly awakened boy again for good measure. "What the hell?" the cursed boy exclaimed, already retaliating by slapping back. The swordsman's head rocked to one side and his thick bangs flopped forward to obscure his eyes. "Oh my god, what have I done?" Allen yelped, his voice rather high-pitched. Kanda growled something indeterminately threatening and seized the other boot's pale throat. Allen gurgled faintly just as the compartment door slid open again.

"Dinner is ser--," the porter cut himself off with a sob when Kanda gave him a look implying that the entire world was going to pay dearly for the insult he had just endured. A laden trolley stood abandoned in the hall outside. Steam rose gently from the covered dished it bore. Allen's stomach rumbled. The irritable black-haired teen glowered and stood suddenly, dusting himself off as though nothing had happened. The cursed teen rubbed his throat idly as he sat up and watched Kanda pull the trolled into the compartment, slamming the door shut behind him.

"I think this one's mine," Allen remarked cheerfully as he reached for one of the dishes. Kanda smacked him across the backs of his hands with Mugen and he white-haired boy pulled back swearing.

"What was that for?" he snarled, trying to rub some life back into his much-abused appendages. The arrogant exorcist shot his a withering look.

"Do you eat everything anyone brings you?" the swords master sighed. Allen considered this for a moment.

"Well, no. I don't really like mushrooms, so--"

"I think what Kanda-san is getting at is these dishes might be poisoned," Sam interjected, slipping unnoticed into the compartment. Well, unnoticed by Allen at least, who jumped when the Finder spoke, earning himself another ugly look from Kanda. "Are you aware that you are bleeding?" he continued, directing this comment to the cursed boy. Allen lifted his normal hand to his brow and frowned when it came away with the fingertips stained a sticky red.

"When did that happen?" the white-haired teen mused aloud.

"Maybe when you fainted like a woman and smacked your fool head on the glass," Kanda commented dryly. The younger exorcist gazed at him quizzically.

"I fainted?"

The waspish swordsman parted his lips to release an impressively vitriolic barb, but was reduced to emitting an indignant grunt when the Finder _accidentally_ bumped the service trolley into his stomach. "I suppose it could happen," Sam considered, ignoring the hate-filled look the currently incapacitated Kanda was launching in his direction. "A parasite-type Innocence feeds on the energy of its host, so if the host is low on energy, for example, because he hasn't eaten for some time, then the Innocence could cause fainting by monopolizing the host's personal energy. When was the last time you ate, Allen?" finished the tall man as he turned to the cursed exorcist. "Allen--?" General Cross's 'prized' pupil looked up guiltily, part of a lasagna noodle depending from his mouth in a rather ridiculous fashion. The boy grinned sheepishly and consumed the rest of the noodle with a loud slurp. A vein bulged on Kanda's forehead. Sam hurried to keep the peace by quickly distributing the trolley's contents between the two exorcists. Allen continued to dig in like there was no tomorrow while Kanda opted to withdraw into the corner furthest away, where he cradled his tray of soba on his black-clad thighs and contented himself with the occasional dismissive flick of his chopsticks in Allen's general direction. The Finder sighed gloomily.

"At least this in an interesting mission," he murmured, more to convince himself that, yes, the torture of constantly standing between two exorcists who fought like cats and dogs and were unfortunately and distractingly lovely specimens of man-kind was worth the effort than anything else. Allen tipped his fork up and swallowed a huge mouthful; both the Finder and the other exorcist could see the incredible mass of food slide down the slender column of his pale throat. Kanda spared a moment to wonder how the little idiot hadn't choked to death long ago.

"That reminds me, again," the English boy said, tapping the tines of his fork against his lips. "Sam, Kanda wouldn't tell me what the mission was."

The Finder looked surprised. "I thought that informing you about what was going on was a part of Kanda's mission orders...?" The still-damp, raven-tressed exorcist leveled a glare on the poor man that would have frozen even Medusa into so much statuary. Nothing made Kanda angrier that the implication that he was shirking his duties. _Especially_ when he _was. _Samuel's expression rearranged itself into something half triumphant, half apologetic, and entirely innocent. The Japanese man's breath hissed out and the half-clad exorcist shirted into his semi-attentive 'mission report pose,' his legs crossed at the knee and his fingers laced under his chin. The thick white belt migrated a few inches further down the swordsman's long, well-muscled legs.

"There's a mansion in the far northern part of England, about thirty miles north of Newcastle. A total of ten Finders were dispatched over a period of two weeks to investigate an old legend surrounding the place. None of them reported back except the tenth, who sent a garbled, broken message via his golem saying that he had found the previous nine dead. He did not say how they died, or where exactly they were; probably because the next thing on the golem's recording was the sound of screaming."

"And Komui thinks that there may be an Innocence there that is drawing the akuma?" Allen interjected. Kanda shook his head slightly, but Allen couldn't tell if that meant, no, there was no potential Innocence, or, no, Komui _didn't _think.

"That's what has Komui so worried," said Sam, taking over the thread of conversation. "There were reports of people going missing in the same area a few decades ago; that's why the villagers around the estate try to stay away from it. Finders and exorcists were dispatched then, too, but they didn't find anything, let alone an Innocence. The whole story was chalked up to people simply wandering into the forest bordering the estate and getting lost. The wolves at that time were quite numerous."

"So why are we being sent out now, if we already know that there is no Innocence there?" Allen asked, now getting frustrated by the raconteurish manner in which the facts of the mission were being presented. Kanda seized control of the narration with ease, his deep voice rough with some unidentified emotion. _Probably anger, _whispered that little voice in Allen's head, distracting him from what was being said. _Or maybe he's in pain because hat little porter poisoned his tea._ Kanda continued to speak.

"Komui reconsidered the earlier findings since there were no disappearances for nearly fifty years; not until they began again six months ago when a little girl wandered onto the estate. Wolves have to eat, so it is strange that nothing happened for half a century, then started happening again when there are few, if any, large predators anywhere in the vicinity. He sent us to either verify the prior conclusion or to find out the real truth. Either way, the situation needs to be controlled."

"And since the Finders kept vanishing, he sent someone a little harder to make disappear," the cursed teen concluded. There were nods of agreement from the dark exorcist and from Samuel. "So" Allen said slowly, mulling over the facts of the story. "We are simply trying to find out what is going on and put a stop to it, right?" Kanda made a strangled noise deep in his throat and, when he spoke, his voice was dripping with honey-sweet sarcasm.

"Amazing," the usually stolid swordsman ground out through the bared teeth of his maniacal grin. "It's nice to know that you have such fantastic powers of summation." Samuel snickered quietly, stifling the noise behind his hand. Allen's face donned a petulant expression and the first-class compartment's door slid open once more to reveal the same porter, who shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot. A look of purest malice slid across Kanda's face, sly and slippery as an oil slick. The poor rodent-like man noticed and Allen mentally congratulated him for not wetting his pants then and there when he had so clearly become the railroad company's sacrificial goat.

"Yes?" Samuel prompted gently, taking pity on the man. Nobody in the world was paid enough to deal with Kanda's capricious, and notably vicious, moods. The porter swallowed hard and cleared his throat nervously, all the while darting anxious glances in the scowling swordsman's direction.

"I am most terribly sorry," he blathered, addressing the Finder. "There was a steam leak in the boiler room and I am afraid that all of the materials drying in the heat were...well...soaked." There was a long and nasty silence, the same one a person would hear just after a courtier said something most politically incorrect in the presence of their Royal Majesties and just before said Royal Majesties ordered the guillotine to be greased up for use. Samuel looked vexed, but _he_ still had dry clothes to wear. Allen looked pissed because it was a little chilly to be sitting around in damp boxer shorts and nothing else. Kanda looked...well, no one knew exactly how Kanda looked because the arrogant swordsman had tipped his head forward and his face was obscured by his thick, glossy bangs, but this was probably a good thing. Nobody deserved to see the face of death before they died, and wet, chafing pants certainly weren't helping Kanda's sunny disposition. The porter was good at taking obvious hints, and the way Kanda's long-fingered hands were curling around Mugen was sending him a message deeply ingrained in the minds of all prey animals_: run_.

As the porter's footsteps faded from auditory range, the tension in the room began to dissipate. Kanda was still too angry to be on speaking terms with the world, however, so as the trio began to settle down on the padded benches lining the walls of the compartment, it was silently decided that Kanda could have his half of the space all to himself. The Finder rested his back against the seat where Allen's knees were, laid his chin on his chest, and allowed himself to drift off to sleep. The parasite-bearing exorcist twitched around on his soft row of seats in various supine positions before he found one that suited him: on his side, facing into the center of the compartment with his back leaning against the backrests of the seats behind him and his hands folded beneath his cheek like a pillow. Unfortunately, this afforded the slight teen an unsurpassed view of the other exorcist, who lay sprawled on his back like an indolent god. Allen could see that Kanda was already asleep; the Japanese swordsman knew the value of being fresh and well-rested when going into dangerous situations and had trained himself accordingly. The dark teen was perfectly capable of sleeping anywhere while still being completely aware of his surroundings. The white-haired young man watched the other exorcist rest for a while, drinking in the contrast between raven hair, black fabric, and pale skin. By now the white belt had slid down to mid-thigh, leaving nothing to Allen's over-active imagination.

_Oh, fuck,_ were the usually calm boy's last thoughts before he, too, slipped into slumber. _Why the hell does he even bother to wear that stupid thing anyway if he has a different belt for Mugen and it doesn't even stay up? What the hell is he thinking? Fu--oh, god. Let's not think about that._ Allen's mental stress was ended as Mr. Sandman finally got sick of ineffectually sprinkling his sand and just clubbed the young man up side the head with the sandbag. Figuratively, of course. The result: Allen was out like a light. It was not until about eight hours later, sometime around six in the morning when the unfortunate porter crept back into the compartment to wake Sam up and tell him that the train had reached their stop, that Allen stirred and opened pale grey eyes. Sunlight streamed in through the train's many windows, promising a bright, clear day. The exorcists' clothes were clean, dry, and neatly folded in a pile near the door. Breakfast had been delivered in a large basket. And as Allen finished slipping back into his clothes he noticed one more thing. Kanda was still asleep, spread out in a boneless heap. The damn white belt was looped loosely around one ankle and the tight black pants had slithered down to reveal slim hips. Allen blushed madly and smiled to himself: oh, yes. It was a _beautiful_ day.

* * *

Author's Note(s): Thank you to everyone who is still interested in this story. I'm sorry it took so long to update (well, that's starting to be a familiar line), but I've been studying for my finals. Keep in mind the ages I noted at the end of the last chapter, they'll become important down the line. Feel free to ask me any questions about what is going on, but I won't tell you what's going to happen. Flames are welcome. I like to laugh at angry people. Until next time!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: A Tapestry of Travesties

* * *

_Last chapter: And as Allen finished slipping back into his clothes he noticed one more thing. Kanda was still asleep, spread out in a boneless heap. The damn white belt was looped loosely around one ankle and tight black pants had slithered down to reveal slim hips. Allen blushed and smiled to himself: oh, yes. It was a beautiful day.

* * *

_

Fifteen minutes later, the two exorcists and their accompanying Finder stood blinking in the bright glare of a fine summer morning. Kanda, now fully dressed but still slightly disheveled, yawned and stretched discreetly as only he could: arms at his sides, his shoulders lifted and back barely arched. Allen could hear a soft pop for every vertebra. Samuel winced at the sound.

"So," Allen said conversationally, feeling that after such a wonderful morning (all twenty minutes of it that he had been awake to judge) everyone would be in a civil, if not genial, mood and ready for some light banter. "How are we getting to the mansion? You said an hour or two on foot to the estate, but Kanda said it was nearly thirty miles." The Finder flashed him a conspiratorial grin.

"Ah, but I never said on _whose_ feet," Sam chuckled. At that moment, a short, broad man appeared around the corner of the station, hailing them loudly when he caught sight of Samuel. The Finder grinned as he explained to the exorcists.

"This is Thomas, an old friend of mine. He has kindly offered us the use of some of his horses."

The man introduced as Thomas smiled jovially at them, an expression completely at odds with the measuring gaze in his eyes. Abruptly the man became all business, clapping his hands together and rubbing them.

"Right," he announced, his wide, homely face once again creased with a smile, this one entirely genuine. "I know exactly who I'm going to put you up on; two fine studs for you two strapping young men, and a nice, dead-broke gelding for the pretty filly over there."

There was a little hush while the trio considered what the friendly rancher had just said. "Two studs...for the men..." Allen muttered aloud, pointing first at Samuel then at himself as his brain processed the statement. "And a gelding...for the...filly..." His pointing finger stuck out accusingly in Kanda's direction. Samuel smothered his laughter as Allen's eyes bulged out. "You think Kanda is a _girl_?" the younger exorcist yelped.

"Isn't she?" Thomas queried, his great brow furrowed in thought. "She sure looks like a girl." Horrified, Allen spun 'round to see how the "girl" was taking it. And, oddly enough, in the same moment it occurred to him that Kanda _did_ look rather like a girl, albeit an angry, slightly strange one. Kanda had, for some reason, decided to button his uniform coat all the way up, meaning all the way _down_ as well. The black fabric feel from his neck to his ankles and, what with the white trim and the two girdles—_belts, _Allen corrected himself—it looked very much like a dress. But what really clinched the image for him was that Kanda, in their haste to get off the train before it moved on, had left his hair completely unbound and the long tresses were fluttering around him in the wind. Thick bangs hid part of his face and two thick tresses hung straight and heavy on each side, framing his pale features. _Wow,_ Allen's mind breathed as his common sense wandered off to pick daisies with his sanity.

A loud rattle brought the cursed teen back to reality with a soft thump and newly-awakened pale-grey eyes were suddenly riveted on a very angry and very masculine Kanda. A few inches of Mugen's blade gleamed threateningly above the sheathe and, as the swords master shook with rage, the sword clattered back and forth in its confinement.

"I don't think he wants a gelding, Thomas," Samuel confided in a loud and easily-overheard stage-whisper.

"And _I_ don't think now is the time to bring up the word 'geld'," Allen hissed at the Finder. Samuel just chortled all the harder as he walked over to clap a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"Let's get going, then," Sam burbled, tears of mirth sliding down his cheeks. He and Thomas turned and meandered away, soon turning a corner and being hidden by the small station building. This left Allen in the company of a very, very angry Kanda. The parasite-bearing exorcist had to resist the urge to giggle nervously as Kanda reluctantly stormed off after Samuel and his offensive compatriot, stomping and grinding the innocent earth beneath his stiff boots as though he was crushing a certain Finder's head. Unfortunately, Allen's self-control was not strong enough to prevent a half-stifled snort of amusement from escaping his quirked lips when the Japanese swordsman rounded the same corner that had hidden the Finder only seconds before and found himself under the intense scrutiny of a half-dozen young village men.

"Hey, look at that girl!" came an ill-concealed whisper, carried to the two exorcists by the capricious winds. "Thomas wasn't joking, she's _cute_!" Allen's shoulders shook with suppressed glee.

"I don't know, Jake," a second young man responded to the first, who was lounging on a pile of barrels waiting to be loaded onto the train. "She looks kind of pissy, y'know? And she's got a chest flat as an ironing board. I'm not sure she's worth the effort." At this, the white-haired teen's eyes rolled heaven-wards, thanking whatever deities were listening for such a perfect opportunity to watch Kanda squirm. _Poor bastard,_ Inner Allen mock-sympathized. _I'll bet he can't decide which is worse: a bunch of guys thinking that he's a girl, or a bunch of guy's thinking he's not a very good girl. Just the idea of inferiority is usually enough to put him over the edge; and in this case, he really is inferior. Unless, of course, he can find a couple of socks to shove down his front. _Luckily for the younger exorcist, the raven-tresses swordsman was still struck dumb with fury, disbelief, and just a touch of embarrassment, so Allen was able to spasm with delight in relative peace.

"Still," came a third voice. "She has nice hair and I'll bet she has the longest legs hidden under that dress."

"Yeah," another man agreed. "What's with the sword, though?"

"Maybe she's making up for something she hasn't got!" The first speaker laughed uproariously and was joined by the rest of his friends.

"Too bad she already has a boyfriend, huh?" one of them said. Immediately, the merriment ceased and the men stared at Allen, who gulped. Turning his head to look at Kanda, he could feel the bottom drop out of his stomach when he found himself gazing into a pair of blue-grey eyes so suffused with hatred and righteous fury that it was a wonder they didn't glow red. The pale exorcist suddenly remembered why it was a bad, bad idea to be the center of attention.

"I-I think I'll go help Samuel and Thomas with the luggage," Allen muttered, excusing himself as gracefully as possible, given the situation. Barely audible growling followed just behind him, telling him that Kanda was hard on his heels. The whistles and catcalls from the village peanut-gallery didn't help, either, so it was with great haste and discomfort that the two exorcists arrived into the company of the Finder and his friend. They were silent as they walked to the outskirts of the village and moved as a group onto a small, narrow trail, thickly carpeted with pine needles that wound through the dense forest surrounding the village. Samuel eventually struck up a conversation to pass the time with his friend.

"So, Thomas," he asked interestedly. "How can you raise horses in the middle of a forest like this?"

"I don't," the rancher replied good-naturedly. "This forest is only about half a mile thick right here. It opens up into a huge clearing a few miles across and that's where I keep my beauties."

"Really?" Sam said thoughtfully, and the two carried on in the same vein, completely ignoring the two exorcists. Allen trooped along behind them, glancing every once in a while at the sullen Japanese exorcist who seemed to have subsided into quiet seething interspersed with the occasional hiss that was as close as Kanda got to ranting out loud. It was remarkably peaceful for all that, and the white-haired young man found himself breathing deep the fragrant pine-scented air and enjoying the way the shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy of densely packed needles to dapple the ancient hoary bark. His lips curled in an unconscious smile when a blue jay, startled by the crackling of the summer-dry twigs under their boots, flashed through the canopy shrieking avian insults at them in its raucous voice. So idyllic were their surroundings that the pale teen lost all track of time. Samuel and Thomas were similarly affected by their own engrossment in their mutual conversation. Kanda, however, being naturally paranoid and hyper-sensitive to oddities, was rapidly becoming discomfited by the almost terrifying perfection of the place. Muscles grew taut and knotted under the black fabric of Kanda's uniform and the fine hairs on his arms and the back of his neck prickled and stood erect. The white-haired exorcist was blissfully unaware of the swordsman's increasing tension, an odd circumstance that was beyond suspicious in Kanda's mind. Sure, the bean sprout may be an idiot, but he always _knew_.

To hide his discomfort, the Japanese man busied himself with tying his hair up. The white cord he used glowed against his smooth, inky hair and pulled the fine strands tight away from his face except for his thick bangs and the two errant wisps that always seemed to have a mind of their own. A sudden hush made Kanda's wariness rise to a terrible peak and the Japanese swords master stood frozen in a sense of horrified anticipation. A quick jerk on the end of his newly-affixed hair shattered his mental and physical stalemate and he whirled about, one hand already drawing Mugen, his eyes searching frantically for the source of his consternation and foreboding. Finding nothing, he resettled the Innocence blade and turned back to his companions. What he saw forestalled any angry expletives that crowded on his tongue and his mind--usually quick and acerbic as his tongue--stumbled over the fantastical impossibility spread out before him.

The entire forest was frozen in time like a picture. Eerie amber sunlight hung heavy in the air and spread unchanging splashing patterns across every surface, undisturbed by any movement of the wind or leaves, which could have been carved from stone for all of their momentous weight and utter stillness. A bird floated in mid-air, its wings quiescent and unbeating, defying all of the laws of gravity in the silent vacuum that filled the forest like oppressive smoke. More unnerving still was the perfect quietude of his fellow travelers. Allen stood in the mulch of the forest floor, one foot upraised for his next step, ghostly hair a frozen curtain of chalk billowing in a nonexistent breeze, his body an impeccably carved alabaster statue: beautiful and lifeless.

The Japanese man's breath caught sharply in his chest with a painful mixture of shock and something else, intangible and choking, and Mugen sprang into his hands like chain lightning. Mocking laughter rang through the trees and Kanda could practically see the sharp notes moving through the intense stillness. He flinched around to face the sound and stared out into a vast white nothingness, all traces of the forest gone. Detail faded back in slowly and purposefully, revealing wood paneled walls where once had stood trees, flickering lamp light instead of golden sunbeam, and deep ruby plush carpets in place of fallen pine needles. Disoriented, the powerful exorcist stood dazed in the center of the fine European-style room, oblivious to the cheerful crackling of the fire that danced in the grate, casting heat and ruddy light into the open space. Still, despite the unexpected and incredible change in scenery, Kanda wasn't one to wait idly for solutions to present themselves. He strode to the thick, iron-bound oak door and pulled the handle sharply. The dead-bolt rattled loudly in the bolt-hole and the heavy door remained firmly shut. Unfazed, he stepped back from the obstinate portal and assumed a ready stance. The Innocence blade he held could cut through the hellish metal skin of the akuma with no difficulty; such a passage should pose no problem. Kanda hefted Mugen, then stabbed it firmly into the oak door and made as if to slice through the wood planks. The blade stuck fast.

Kanda's breathing became labored with the effort of repressing the strange feelings of irrational fear and crushing claustrophobia that threatened to overwhelm him. He stumbled back from the door, his chest heaving. Clear, deep-blue eyes widened with a passionate and crazed anger, the only signs of emotion on his mask-like countenance. The elegant swordsman gazed in visceral disgust and consternation at the unyielding wood that held Mugen's diamond-keen blade with such impunity. Once more Kanda took hold of the hilt and made as if to jerk the sword free. For all his efforts he only managed to wrench the muscled that spread over his broad shoulders. His iron-fisted control slipped enough to allow him to spit out a single word that burned the air blue. Kanda Yu could, at that moment, express himself singularly grateful that no other being was present to gloat over his humiliation and, after a meaningful glance skyward, he planted one booted foot on the door nearly level with his shoulders, wrapped both fists around Mugen's leather-bound hilt, and strained.

Seconds swam by slowly as fine beads of sweat oozed out of Kanda's fever-hot skin to trickle down the small of his sharply arched back. Ancient timbers groaned under the abrasive treads of his boot but refused to relinquish the treasure that now pierced their honey-toned grain. Kanda heaved, nearly his whole weight thrown into the effort of dislodging Mugen, his Innocence, his companion, _his_ damn it. The patterns of firelight flickering against the wood were soothing and even as he flung himself into his exertions he admired them with absent-minded praise. The lights danced across the planks and glittered off of the Innocence blade, winking like jewels, until it lay in a molten pool of radiance around the join of tree and steel. And then the blade moved, not as Kanda expected, but sliding deeper into the oaken material, vanishing by inches. At the sight of his last and most precious defense slipping away Kanda lost all semblance of reason and propriety. He tore at the uncaring door with his bare hands, jerking at both hilt and blade until blood ran freely from his mutilated palms. He screamed like a madman and still the blade sunk away until the base of the hilt rested flush with the door's surface. The Japanese swordsman's bloodied digits could find no purchase on the crimson-slicked hilt and he was forced to watch with mindless despair and futile rage as the last shine of the Innocence blade was swallowed up entirely. He scrabbled at the stoic wood even as his nails cracked and splintered and tore free, his scarlet life-fluid now liberally splattering the once-golden oak. Foam flew from the corners of his mouth as he threw himself against the impassive portal again and again, howling incoherently until all of his vast reserves of energy were spent. Agony overtook the graceful man and he swooned down to his knees with every nerve-ending seizing with the white-hot fire of pain. He pressed his tortured brow against the gore-soaked timbers and sobbed, deep, racking gasps that would steal the very soul from him.

Minutes, hours, days later, he stood, lifting his face from the sticky glue of congealed plasma. Trembling hands were raised before delirious eyes, the gummy sclera showing all around the deep cobalt irises. Rusty flakes of caked hemoglobin cracked and fell away as a sick parody of fairy dust. The madness of loss was driven from him, leaving behind only abyssal despondency and a sense of irreparable _lacking_, a void only curable by the return of all meaning and purpose stolen away with the Innocence blade.

Gasping in anguish, the Japanese man turned slowly to huddle against the threshold in such a way that the smooth brass handle, so cool against his pyretic flesh, dug into his cramped spine. Midnight eyes fluttered shut and his breaths shuddered into pained coughs.

"Poor Kanda," breathed a gentle voice, a soothing voice. Cool fingers brushed gently across the swordsman's scorching face. "So alone. So _defenseless_." Convulsions wracked Kanda's sickly body and his mind, once diligent and penetrating, floundered after recognition that eluded him teasingly, threads of recall dancing just out of reach. Eventually those ocean-dark eyes struggled to open, parting the crusted lashes, then widened exponentially to drink in the heavenly sight before him. Cool grey eyes gazed back at him pityingly, surrounded by downy snow-colored hair and pale skin: a vision of winter mush welcome to Kanda's burning conscious.

"I know you," Kanda's voice ground out, low and cracked by the abuse it had suffered. "I _know_ you." Those lips, pale pink like the earliest spring bloom, smiled gently at him and the refreshing voice—heavenly voice!—spoke again.

"Hush," the vision sighed, easing the battered swordsman into an embrace that smelled of fresh snow and aurora. Kanda fell eagerly, savoring the small lessening of heat in the inferno of his bones. "Oh, poor, poor Kanda," that sweet voice whispered again as the phantom pressed the raven-haired man's battered face to his shoulder. "Stop worrying; you'll never feel alone again." Too weakened by his illness and psychosis, Kanda didn't question as the ghostly hands passed over his shoulders and down his back only to slide up the front of his shirt. Gone was the pleasing comfort of the touch, replaced by biting cold. The fevered exorcist shoved the other away with a groan to look down at his own belly, prickling with goose bumps, and the oddly scaled appendage that rested lightly on his tense abdomen. He wavered in disembodied confusion at the faint white light that radiated from the cross-marked claw and his eyes struggled up to stare into frigid grey.

"Goodbye, Kanda Yu," fell from those pale lips, icy droplets that shattered like dust in the wind. Kanda drew breath to speak, to cry, to howl—he himself was unsure—but long silvery talons thrust through his taut flesh. Deeply blue eyes watched dazedly as sparkling wine-colored fluid spilled like a curtain of wind-blown silk, the red torrent marking the marble-and-alabaster form of his wintry companion. One shaking hand, calloused from years of sword-handling, clutched reflexively over the icicle spires that impaled him, and suddenly his body was cold, too cold, as though it sought to match the temperature of that frost-rimed appendage that pierced it. He tumbled forward as slowly as the last autumn leaf falls, his stouter body draping over the unmoving shoulder of the white child.

"Poor, silly Kanda," the ghastly voice hissed against his ear and his vision flared darkly red, obscuring everything but the throbbing of his own heart. Time and space stretched, warped, then snapped back with terrible elasticity. Heat raged through Kanda's body once more, but it was no longer the dispassionate symptom of illness; now it rose like a coiled beast from his gut, rich and heady, fiery, burning lust and desire. Gone were the acrid reek of gore and the sharp tank of copper and iron, replaced by the more sensual scents of sweat and musk. He still lay with his head pressed to the shoulder of the pale being, but now he controlled it, dominated it, while its two perfectly-formed hands clutched at his shoulders and smooth, unmarked belly. That perfect voice was raised in incoherent cries, half-smothered by the red silk pillow to which its owner's face was pressed, its tones anguishing in pain or pleasure; Kanda found that he did not know and could not care. The searing heat built low, pooled aching at his loins, as he thrush punishingly into the pale, fragile body spread beneath him on a scarlet coverlet. He looked into pale grey eyes once more and found them wet with tears and filled with the same trapped fear that had broken his soul apart only—how long had it been? Hours, days?—earlier. The swordsman's stomach roiled and he ripped himself away from the smaller figure, who yelled in exquisite pain. Clamping a hand over his mouth, Kanda rushed out of the oppressive bedroom, gaudy and tasteless and a whore's, and slammed open the door stained with his own blood to stagger out into a field of clear, virgin snow. There, accompanied only by the wind and uncaring stars, he retched and heaved until his throat was raw from the passage of acid bile. Weakened, he fell to one side, yielding himself up to the chill of ice particles against his skin, naked skin, sinful skin, and was confronted by images of pale eyes, weeping eyes the color of rain. Kanda tossed back his head and screamed wordless denial at the endless vault of the heavens, seizing a handful of chafing snow to scrub his guilt from his mortal flesh. Blood, clean blood, pure blood, welled up and spilled around him, his penance. Black surged up from the ground and rushed down from the firmament to explode behind his eyes in a dazzling parti-color flash of lurid lights. The swordsman collapsed insensate and knew no more, the maniacal laughter of some hidden observer unheard and unheeded.

The soft noise of a limp body impacting with thick leaf mulch made Allen turn in surprise.

"Kanda!" his startled yelp broke into the repartee between the Finder and his friend and they, too, paused to look. The pale-haired exorcist ran to kneel down beside the Japanese man who thrashed wildly on the ground, his long black hair in complete disarray. Allen could only try helplessly to pin down the flailing limbs as Kanda's superior physical strength kept shoving him back with a glancing blow from one tossed appendage. Samuel and Thomas hastened to help and the rancher took command with the ease of long experience.

"Get his head, Sam," he ordered calmly as he produced a lead-rope from his pack. "He's just like a little calf; the trick is to get his legs." Thomas twisted the rope deftly around one of the swordsman's legs and pulled it forward. Between them, Allen and Samuel managed to grasp the other leg and Thomas accepted it with another loop of the lead and tied it and one of Kanda's forearms together with a quick-release knot, then sat back to admire his handiwork. Allen and Samuel just stared. The dark-eyed exorcist had subsided and now lay curled in a decidedly painful-looking ball, his knees pulled nearly to his chest because of the binds around his ankles and wrist. He was still quaking and a low, keening wail issued from deep inside his chest, but he was no longer in his earlier paroxysms of unexplained origin.

"What happened, Allen?" Samuel asked worriedly, eyeing the bonds restraining the black-clad swordsman. Thomas patted the rope reassuringly and averred that they wouldn't come loose until the tail-end of the knot was pulled. The Finder absorbed this information gratefully and relaxed slightly.

"I'm not sure," the youngest member of their group responded thoughtfully as he mulled over everything he could remember before Kanda's sudden collapse. "He was just walking along behind me; it didn't seem like there was anything wrong. At least, until he fell over."

"Well, leaving him on the ground isn't helping him any," Thomas interjected. "Let's get him to my place and then you can decide if you want to go on to the Manor tonight or not." The other two nodded agreement and the farmer hefted Kanda's limp body up over his head so that he rested across Thomas's shoulders with his bound limbs dangling in front of his chest. Allen stepped up behind him to steady Kanda's lolling head and the three set off slowly. What had started out to be a brief walk of well under an hour instead took more than three as they had to stop every time Kanda resumed his struggles. It was almost ten o'-clock in the morning, four hours after their departure from the train, when the group finally reached Thomas's home.

Kanda was deposited on the bed in the guest room of the moderately-sized clapboard house and with one swift jerk his limbs were unbound.

"What now?" Allen asked quietly. Thomas flashed him a soothing smile.

"There's not much we _can_ do until Sleeping Beauty there wakes up, so we're going to go have lunch and talk about my horses."

"Are you sure it will be alright to leave him alone?" Allen queried anxiously.

"Allen's right, Tom. I'm not sure leaving Kanda in such a state really in advisable," Samuel agreed.

"Bah!" Samuel scoffed, throwing his hands up, but he fetched chairs for each of them before hustling off to make lunch. He returned a short while later with a plate piled high with thick cold-cut sandwiches and a beer for himself and Samuel. Allen was offered a glass of milk which he downed in a single gulp before his anxiety forced him to ravenously attack the proffered meal. Thomas watched in awe as the slender boy packed away half-a-dozen sandwiched in quick succession, then teased the white-haired young man good-naturedly. Samuel joined in and lunchtime passed cheerfully until a soft moan broke through their laughter.

Kanda's dense black lashes stirred then opened slowly and the young man sat up, one hand on his head. Allen leapt to his side.

"Are you feeling well, Kanda?" he inquired. Muzzy, dark-blue eyes lifted confused to meet Allen's direct pale grey stare. There was a breathless pause then the swords master wrenched himself away with a shocked gasp, clutching at his belly just below the ribs on his left side. Apparently satisfied by something, Kanda let his hands drop as he rose abruptly from the bed to stand with his back to them.

"Kanda?" Samuel probed gently.

"Let's go," came the curt reply and the swordsman marched out of the room, one hand grasping Mugen's hilt as though he was afraid of losing the Innocence blade.

"You heard the man," Thomas said, casting a strange look after Kanda. Allen and Samuel mumbled assent and the rancher led the Black Order trio out to the stables. In the flurry of hostling activity that ensued, each of them found themselves holding fast to the leather reins of a horse. With a final pat and tug on a girth, Thomas declared himself satisfied.

"Now," the rancher said, suddenly serious. "You bring them back to me, you hear?" His attitude gentled and he added, "just head to the northwest corner of this clearing; you'll find a path there that will take you all the way to the gates of the estate."

There was a swirl of black fabric like raven's wings as Kanda settled himself into the saddle with casual grace. Allen and Samuel mounted more slowly then followed the swordsman as he nodded his thanks to the rancher and turned his tall grey stud to the north. The rancher watched them until, with a last swish of the chestnut tail of Allen's mare, the three disappeared from sight. Thomas sighed and rubbed the velvet nose that prodded at his broad shoulder.

"Oh, Lady," he addressed the nose's owner, staring into her clear brown eyes. "That swordsman had better watch himself." He looked back to where the trio had vanished and shook his head before returning to his house and bolting the door behind him.

* * *

BWAHAHAHA!!!! I'm back and amazed that I actually got this chapter finished. It's been, what, four months? Anyway, I already know how the story is going to end so I'll keep plugging away at getting it finished. Other that that, torturing Kanda is important to the story.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed. Generally I reply to every one, but if I haven't replied to you it's because I haven logged on in three months. Thank you for reading.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Trail of Blood

* * *

_The rancher watched them until, with a last switch of the chestnut tail of Allen's mare, the three disappeared from sight. Thomas sighed and rubbed the velvet nose that prodded him in the shoulder. "Oh, Lady," he addressed the nose's owner, staring into her clear brown eyes. "That swordsman had better watch himself." He looked back to where the trio had vanished and shook his head before returning to his house and bolting the door behind him.

* * *

_

Allen sat stiffly on the back of his chestnut mare and stared at a spot between Kanda's shoulders where the black and white fabric of his uniform met in a point. It was not that this spot was of special interest, or indeed of remarkable color, but that it was the spot that, when focused on for long periods of time, made Kanda agitated and incited his paranoia. The white-haired teen had decided roughly ten minutes earlier, when the little group had first moved out of sight of the rancher's homestead, that Kanda had obviously had some sort of horrendous and traumatic experience in the woods that would have left a normal person shivering in a padded room in an asylum somewhere and that it was neither his business nor his place to enquire about that experience. Seven minutes before the present, that decision was revised as the pale exorcist, overcome with curiosity, reached the conclusion that, since they were both exorcists and they were clearly on a mission together and anything that effected Kanda was going to effect the mission, it most certainly was his business as Kanda's partner to have some knowledge of exactly what transpired in the older exorcist's head. With all of the moral and ethical concerns now safely closeted in a steel vault of semi-valid reasoning—allowing Allen's human nature to run rampant without any fear of punishment by his conscience—the only problem that was left was finding a way to force the inscrutable and intractable swordsman to open up and share something that he no doubt planned on keeping secret even beyond the grave. That was why, only three minutes ago, Allen had begun his staring contest with the back of Kanda's long uniform coat with the intent of triggering one of the occasional violent outbursts of temper that passed as normal conversation for the frigid and inscrutable Japanese exorcist.

Presently, Allen found his eyes watering and smarting from three minutes of intense and unblinking staring, causing the crisp line between the black and white fabrics to blur and run together, and Kanda—_stupid, irritating, annoying, sociopathic asshole_, Inner Allen growled—was completely ignorant or ignoring something that usually made him apoplectic with hyper-suspicious rage. Rather than responding as the parasite-bearing exorcist had hoped, the raven-haired man sat straight-backed and stiff on his dapple-grey stallion. This confused the cursed teen: Kanda was _always_ aware of his surroundings: of every nuance of menace, of every glance and stare directed at his slender form. Allen redoubled the force of his glare out of sheer frustration until his pale cheeks turned red and the veins on his forehead bulged out. Kanda's right shoulder twitched and his horse snorted and shook its coarse black mare. Allen hissed softly and abandoned his original plan, choosing instead to nudge his chestnut mare up beside Kanda's much-taller mount until the two exorcists' legs bumped together with every step made by an iron-shod hoof. A brief thrill of satisfaction stole through the younger exorcist when the swords master slanted him an ugly look out of the corner of his narrowed eyes without turning his head: _now_ he had his attention.

"Do you want to talk about it?" the cursed teen questioned calmly, feigning disinterest in the hopes of getting the recluse swordsman to speak. He had learned long ago that at any sign of interest, Kanda would clam up and once he did, no amount of prizing would get him to speak a single word, whereas complete indifference would lull the older exorcist into allowing a few semi-personal phrases to trickle out every once-in-a-while. _Reverse psychology_, Inner Allen supplied, _you have to want none to get some_. Allen blinked with surprise, not expecting the sudden innuendo. Inner Allen giggled quietly in some dark, hidden corner of his mind: the same corner from which the desire to watch that damn white belt slide off Kanda's hips had emerged on the train. The pale boy shook his head gently a few times to clear the unwanted thoughts and returned his attention to the other exorcist. He recoiled almost immediately. The ugly look that had marred Kanda's face only seconds earlier had morphed into a terrible rictus of fury and barely-controlled self-loathing. Allen was stunned, Kanda _never_ showed that much emotion in the presence of anyone. Other emotions flitted across the Japanese exorcist's face like clouds over the sun moving too quickly to be identified before Kanda managed to wrestle his betraying expressions back into his usual stoic mask. Curiosity rose like a tide in Allen, whose restraint had neither the strength nor experience to match Kanda's, and the pale-tressed teen could feel the eagerness beaming off of his face. Kanda noticed and focused his eyes back on the path ahead, urging the powerfully-built grey stud forward and away from Allen's horse. The younger of the two exorcists, knowing his ploy wasn't going to work at this point and resigning himself to being ignored by the other exorcist for the next millennia, reigned in his own flame-colored mare to make Kanda's move easier.

_Damn_, Allen thought as he watched the space between himself and the ill-tempered Japanese man widen. A low chuckle from behind him made the parasite-bearing teen turn in the saddle. Samuel, who had been last in line and had seen Allen's attempt at discerning what was bothering Kanda, was laughing at him. Allen's lip stuck out and his expression soured and turned petulant. The Finder just grinned and guided his sturdy brown gelding in the same maneuver the grey-eyed boy had employed only moments earlier.

"Nice try," the Finder remarked, still grinning. "Though if you wanted to know something you should have asked about something mundane, like the weather or what color of underwear he happens to be wearing. Don't ever ask him directly about something you actually care about; he likes to screw with people's minds."

"What makes you think I'm _not_ interested in Kanda's underwear color?" Allen quipped flippantly, his sense of humor wresting control of his mouth from his brain momentarily. Samuel raised an eyebrow and Allen blushed. "I was _joking_! And I'm _sure_ you're an expert in Kanda-ology, since you obviously know what to say," the young exorcist snapped bitterly in an attempt to hide his embarrassment, hunching up in the saddle to sulk. Samuel just laughed again and tousled the spider web-fine white hair that floated around the smaller man's head in the light breeze. Allen shrugged the hand off in a complicated wiggle then shot a glare at the Finder that quickly softened into confusion. "What do you think is bothering him?"

"A woman!" the brown-haired man chirped light-heartedly, but he grew solemn very quickly, dismissing his own joke with his somber air. The Finder sighed and sat back in the saddle, dropping his reins to rest on the horn and putting his hands flat on the gelding's rump. "I don't know, Allen. I've never seen a perfectly healthy person just keel over like that, let alone Kanda. Of course, it's especially difficult finding out what's the matter just with Kanda being who he is; I can't imagine him suddenly turning into a sweet-tempered, friendly Mr. Sunshine-and-light and sharing all of his deepest, darkest secrets with us." Allen smirked at that as Samuel continued. "He probably had a hallucination that shook him up pretty badly; I doubt that it was just a seizure."

"But what would he hallucinate? What scares Kanda so badly, enough to make him push everyone away like that?" Allen half-yelled in exasperation. There was a pause as both men stared at Kanda's seemingly-disinterested back. "Okay," Allen clarified. "That probably wasn't the best question given that Kanda drives everyone away regardless of whether or not he's scared. Still, he's even more anti-social than usual. Do you realize that he has somehow managed to go beyond anti-social? What he is now is like a derivative of anti-social!"

There was another long pause, then—"You know he's listening to us, don't you?"

Another pause. "Damn. Now he'll never talk: _he knows we're interested_!" Allen snorted with laughter at the Finder's easily-overheard stage whisper and, if possible, Kanda's posture became even more rigid and inflexible.

"God, this is going to be a long mission," Samuel groaned. "I hope you turn out to be a great conversationalist because there's only you to talk to now that Kanda has fully descended onto the land of monosyllabic answers." Allen blinked and felt vaguely insulted until he realized that he was being teased.

The white-haired teen huffed with mock-disdain. "Well, maybe if you had greater—hey. Is that it?"

"That's it," Samuel confirmed.

The trio had been travelling on the wooded path for nearly three hours. Thomas's ranch had vanished from view quickly and the path had wound its way through the dense forest that covered most of the flat valley. They had ridden through the level woods that blanketed the fertile flatlands for an hour or two in mostly-complete silence, aside for a few brief questions about how Kanda was sure that the faint path he was leading them down was actually the right path, when the ground became steeper and the trees more stunted. Patches of bare rock had made their appearances more often as well and the footing became treacherous since the pine needle-covered earth offered no traction to their horses' shod hooves. Now, three hours after their initial departure, they had crested a steep rise where the path had been carved into the side of one of the jagged mountains that had loomed and glowered on the horizon when they had first reached the train station. Their view suddenly expanded, revealing the rest of the path snaking down the other, sheerer side of the craggy rock face. Pines stood at odd angles on this side, having been blasted by the wind and scoured by the elements until branches only remained on the lee-ward side of their gnarled trunks. Far below and half-hidden by the thousands of spiny needles that stood out bravely from their twiggy basements, the steep, slate-clad gables of the manor were just visible, nestled in a fold in the dark grey granite mountain.

Kanda reigned in his mount at the top of the declining path and Allen and Samuel drew up behind him. The wind whistled across the ragged peaks with stinging force and, though it was still early afternoon, the sky was a slate grey, the sun hidden behind the swirling mists rising from the valleys below. The grey stud's breath condensed in the chill air and the ghostly plume it formed blew back across the two exorcists and the Finder. Allen's chestnut mare snorted and tossed her head, stomping on the cold rock of the path.

"Well, this is a charming location. It's freezing and it's mid-summer and there's no view to speak of, just fog, mist, cloud, and maybe some more fog," Samuel grumbled sarcastically. "_Obviously_ the perfect spot for a summer home." Allen, who was delighted to finally have some semblance of conversation after hours of silence, took his statement as an opportunity to complain.

"Didn't you say that this whole ride to the manor wasn't going to take very long? Something like an hour or two as I recall. I'm starting to think Kanda was right about not giving a time, only his little 'thirty miles.'" Allen dropped his voice an octave theatrically on the last two words in an attempt to mimic Kanda's sharp-edged baritone and ended up sounding like a seventy-year-old chain smoker. Samuel laughed and Kanda sent him a look that would have made a normal person's blood freeze in their veins.

"I was just trying to keep you from being depressed about the length and misery of our mission. You were in such a good mood at the time," Samuel chuckled back. Allen scoffed but didn't respond because he had taken the opportunity provided by their slight pause to root around in his saddlebags in search of a snack to fuel his incredible metabolism. Kanda, still pissed about the earlier impression, just squeezed his mount's sides with his heel s and began the descent to the valley below. The Finder followed, pausing only to glance back at the oblivious white-haired teen. He figured that it was better to let the young exorcist fall behind a little and catch up later than to have him pass out from hunger. The brown-haired man shrugged and continued, nudging his heavy gelding forward until its nose nearly touched the grey stud's inky tail with every step. Both of the horses moved slowly on the steep, slick slope, their haunches rolling almost comically as they sought purchase on the smooth rock below.

Up above, Allen's grasping hands closed on a bag of candied walnuts. With a shout of glee he straightened in the saddle and hoisted the bag aloft triumphantly.

"I found it! I fou—hey! Hey, guys?" The cursed teen stared around for a while before catching sight of Samuel and Kanda about a hundred yards down the mountain, navigating a narrow portion of the trail that overhung a sheer drop-off. "Hey!" he yelled again reproachfully and brought his heels to his mare's sides sharply. The overly-hasty and unintentional kick from her rider sent the mare skittering forward, her hooves sliding on the rock, and both of them teetered for the barest of moments on the beginning of the slope before plunging down the trail. Allen's eyes were side and his knuckles white as the mare surged toward their companions, struggling to halt their uncontrolled advance. Allen's cries of terror made the two older men turn their heads to find the source of the commotion. Samuel let loose a blistering curse and tried to pull his stolid brown gelding out of the way, a nigh-impossible feat and the steep, narrow path. Kanda, however, maneuvered the tall grey stallion into the center of the path and turned him to face the careening flame-colored mare. Allen groaned.

"No! No! Kanda! Get out of the way!" the panicked white-haired boy shrieked, abandoning his useless hold on the reins in favor of grabbing the more solid saddle horn. He caught sight of the faintly determined expression mingled with annoyance that twisted the swords master's face and the younger exorcist had the sudden image and unpleasant of the two of them and their horses falling over the precipice on the sheer side of the winding path to smash into little bloody pieces on the rocks below. "Oh, for God's sake, you stubborn bastard!" Allen cried out in desperation. "Get the hell out of the way!"

The next second, the bright chestnut mare's chest slammed into the dappled stud's broad shoulder with a loud crunch. The much larger grey horse snorted and locked his knees and the wind whooshed out of the mare in a sharp gasp. The sudden jolt threw Allen from his precarious perch over the mare's lurching back and launched him sling-shot style over the mare's bowed head and into Kanda's chest. Kanda rocked backward with the force of the blow dealt by the smaller exorcist's impact, sliding sideways in the saddle as the stud loosed a vicious show of temper: squealing angrily and biting the mare hard on the neck with his blunt, square teeth. Allen could hear the raven-haired man's breath his out from between his teeth as the Japanese swordsman struggled to right himself, a difficult endeavor since his arms had reflexively clamped around Allen's wriggling weight and he had only one leg hooked over the saddle with which to drag himself and his less-than-helpful burden back up onto the stallion's back. Meanwhile the younger exorcist had drawn some conclusions about the safety of his current situation, namely being held up in the arms of an ill-tempered, angry Japanese swordsman against whose chest his face was pressed with smothering force and who was the only thing keeping them both from dropping sixteen hands onto cold slate and under two sets of sharp, stomping hooves. Allen blanched as white as his hair, shrieked again, leaving a trail of saliva on the front of the black-haired exorcist's uniform, and tried to climb to safety, throwing one leg over the saddle and coincidentally around Kanda's waist.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God!" Allen chanted mindlessly under his breath, clutching at Kanda's arms to anchor himself and making a concerted effort to straighten up by throwing his weight around.

"Damn it, Bean Sprout," Kanda growled in response to both the pale teen's antics and their current position, then sneezed when he inhaled a deep breath of Allen' silky white hair which had been shoved rudely into his face by Allen's lurching. The sneeze further startled the already-spooked horses and the flamingly chestnut mare flinched, wheeled, and tried to bolt, but her iron-shod hooves skidded out from underneath her on the slick stone and the motion that had been intended to be a leap turned into a collapse. She fell squealing and lashing out in every direction. The dappled stallion danced backward to avoid her fall and Samuel, who had pulled his brown gelding out of danger by some miracle of chance, started shouting words that added to the general uproar.

"Shit! That's a cliff!" the distraught Finder bellowed. Kanda's head whipped around, cracking his jaw on the top of the younger exorcist's head, and his deeply blue eyes widened. The stud kept moving, his large hooves moving dangerously close to the edge. The raven-haired man swore and drew Mugen, bringing the blade's flat down heavily on the horse's quivering haunches. The stallion screamed as the wickedly sharp edges bit into the muscled flesh leaving shallow cuts and lunged forward, plowing into the still-downed mare with the force of a freight train. The writhing chestnut horse's shrill cries joined the stallion's in a terrible cacophony and her head snaked out so that she could sink her bared teeth into the stud's upper foreleg. Kanda's grey mount's long front legs left the ground as he reared back and stood on his wide-splayed hind legs. Allen found himself slamming face-first into Kanda's front and hit his nose on the swordsman's silver badge. Kanda reeled backwards again as both the stud's movement and the cursed teen's unexpected shift sent the swordsman tumbling back over his center of gravity. The reallocation of the weight on its back made the tall grey horse overbalance and with Samuel watching in a state of stunned horror, the horse and its two struggling riders fell backwards onto solid rock.

For a moment all Samuel could see was the stud's heavy body, splayed out on top of the crushed remains of what had once been a saddle, waving its lengthy legs in the air helplessly like an enormous overturned beetle. A sickening feeling roiled in the Finder's gut; people just didn't survive having more than half a ton of horse come crashing down on them. Still, Samuel couldn't look away and he watched as the stallion continued to struggle, shedding bits of shattered tack as it flailed until it flopped heavily over onto its side, then, with a grunt, the horse set its hooves down firmly on the stone and staggered to its feet, stumbling away from the cliff's edge and down the perilous road a short distance where it stood with its head down and its flanks heaving. Clouds of mist spewed from its flared nostrils as its breathing slowly returned to normal. It was only then, when he had no further reason to avoid looking at the place where Kanda and Allen's crushed bodies would lay, that the brown-haired man allowed his sad gaze to fall on the dreaded spot. Breath whooshed out of the Finder in a relieved sigh to mingle with hastily-hidden tears of relief.

There, teetering on the very edge of the precipice, were the two exorcists who he had believed dead. Kanda lay on his back with his long inky hair tumbled around him in utter disarray, his arms wrapped tightly around a curled black-and-white bundle that was apparently the trembling body of the younger exorcist. Samuel could see the anti-social exorcist gasp for two deep, heaving breaths before his eyes rolled back slightly and his arms went limp, slipping off of the pale teen's still form. The swordsman's shaky limbs dropped to the ground on either side of his prone body, one of his hands dangling off of the edge of the cliff, unsupported by earth from the elbow down. The other hand behaved in a fashion more in keeping with the swords master's usual behavior: though it, too, had shown weakness, it maintained a death-grip on the leather-bound hilt of the Innocence blade. The cursed exorcist slowly uncoiled from the little heap he had folded up in, looking for all the world like an isopod or fall caterpillar, and lay draped across Kanda's chest for a few more moments before pushing himself up on his elbows over the older boy, their legs still twined together from their fall and their faces scant inches apart.

Samuel expected the Japanese man to respond with cold words and violent movements, threats and brandishing of Mugen's naked blade. He as, to say the least, stunned when Kanda just lay there, allowing his personal bubble to be invaded and his body to be used as a cushion by a man he had clearly expressed dislike for on innumerable occasions. The Finder nearly fell off his horse in shock when Kanda lifted his free hand to Allen's face and wiped at it with the edge of his sleeve, right where the black fabric met that of the white cuff. The poor simple Finder's brain was grinding to a halt as the foundations of animosity that supported his image of Kanda started to crumble at the tender action.

"Get off of me, Bean Sprout," the dark exorcist whispered, his voice rough and husky. "You're bleeding on me and you weigh a ton." Allen's face flushed bright red before he scrambled to his feet and tried to stop the steady trickle of blood flowing from his nostrils, Kanda's words having finally sunk in.

"Sorry!" the white-haired teen squeaked, his bloody hands fluttering around pointlessly as he alternated between tipping his head backward and forward. It became painfully obvious that Allen wasn't entirely sure how to staunch his nose bleed and, as Samuel judged from the malicious look the raven-tressed Japanese man was sending in the other exorcist's direction, his uncertainty was beginning to piss Kanda off. Kanda didn't bother to acknowledge the other teen's apology, he just sat up slowly, clutching at his ribs as he had done only a day earlier. A few small bubbles of frothy blood dripped from one corner of his mouth.

"Ah!" Allen cried out. "Is it your ribs again?" The Japanese man just shot the shorter boy a withering glare and Samuel relaxed. _That explains a lot_, he thought, relieved since was now sure he didn't have to deal with a sudden personality change from the stoic man, and he chalked up Kanda's earlier actions to being out of his mind with pain. With that in mind, the Finder swung down out of his saddle and approached the fallen exorcist, medical kit in hand. As he knelt down beside Kanda, Samuel spared a glance for Allen.

"What happened to you?" he asked, tearing a piece of cotton wool for the cursed teen's nose.

"Ah dink ah bwoke mah dose when ah 'it 'Anda's badge," Allen responded, his voice altered by the mixture of blood and cotton currently shoved up his nose.

"Well, stop trying to tip your head, you look like an idiot," Samuel directed. Kanda's expression registered agreement with this statement. "Just pinch it right below the cartilage," he continued. "Yeah, just like that." Once he had Allen's minor injuries sorted out, the Finder returned his attention to the swordsman.

"'S he gonna be alright?" Allen asked, wrinkling his nose comically above the tuft of cotton protruding from one nostril. Samuel had to choke back a snort of laughter before replying.

"He'll be fine."

Samuel turned his calm brown eyes back to his patient and was met with a shockingly blue stare that radiated impatience in palpable waves. The Finder's jocular nature chose that moment to surface and the oldest member of the trio found himself fighting down the irresistible urge to make a joke at the expense of the only person present whose sense of humor was entirely atrophied.

"So, Kanda, I take it you enjoyed your little exhibition back at headquarters. I'm just disappointed that you only let us strip you when you're too injured for us to do anything about it—ow! Ow, owowow. Yeah, okay, you've made your point." The Finder hissed in pain and Kanda's tight grip loosened, allowing Samuel's hand to return to a more normal position, namely one in which his hand was not bent so far back that his knuckles nearly touched the back of his arm. "Sheesh," the brown-haired man huffed, rubbing his wrist as Kanda worked on unbolting, unbuckling, and unbuttoning his heavy coat. When the exorcist's uniform coat finally fell open to reveal his toned chest, Samuel let out a low whistle. The swordsman's hand, which had never really let go of its threatening hold on the stocky Finder's arm, clenched so that the older man could feel his bones grind together and the Finder hurried to clarify.

"I think you've cracked a couple of ribs, Kanda. Again. This time they're not broken up quite so badly, though. I'm still amazed from the last time; I read in your file that you healed quickly, but I still find it hard to believe that you managed to completely heal ribs broken only a day ago. That's why we're going to assume that the fall you just took just reinjured what was already damaged rather than broke something in perfect health. It's easier to wrap my mind around that way." Samuel used his chatter to distract the moody exorcist from the bandages he was currently wrapping tightly around Kanda's chest to replace the ones that had been removed that morning.

"Just hurry up," the exorcist interrupted, breathing out from between gritted teeth. Samuel paused.

"Shouldn't these ribs not hurt anymore? I mean, last time you were up and walking and bitching at everyone in minutes and these injuries aren't nearly as bad." The Finder's questions were delivered in a worried tone of voice. Allen, too, paused in his activities (eating the candied walnuts that had miraculously survived the descent intact) out of curiosity. It _was_ weird.

"Che," was their answer. "These aren't bad enough to be healed _that_ way."

The Finder nodded his acceptance of this explanation and resumed talking, but Allen just fixed Kanda with a stern gaze. The pale teen had known Kanda for long enough, had been on enough missions with him, to pick up on Kanda's moods. The signs were faint, very faint, unless it was one of the swordsman's occasional eruptions of temper, so most people labored under the mistaken assumption that the Japanese man was just a frigid asshole who _had_ no emotions. Allen, on the other hand, knew they were wrong, at least about the no emotions part. And Allen knew what Kanda's current mood was.

_He's lying. And he's afraid_, Inner Allen whispered in the deep recessed of his mind. _Yeah_, he agreed with himself. _He's always healed all of his injuries before, so what's different now?_ Inner Allen just shrugged in his mind.

Kanda stood shortly after Allen's internal debate drew to a close, rising slowly and swaying slightly. Samuel made as if to steady the shaky exorcist, but a look from the swords master stopped him.

"Has anyone checked on the horses?" the wounded exorcist asked, his words spat out from between his clenched teeth as he took a few halting steps away from the cliff's edge with Samuel clucking over him like a mother hen. Mugen, which was put down when Kanda removed his coat, was left on the cold stone where the exorcist had been sitting.

"No, we haven't check—oh."

"Allen's speech trailed off and the three simply stood, staring back up the trail to where the two horses had originally collided. The chestnut mare lay heavily on the ground, her eyes rolling wildly in pain and fear. Her long, delicate legs were bent and broken beneath her, sticking out at odd angles, and strips of her glossy hide had been ripped off during her tumble on the cold slate. Allen and Samuel felt frozen in horror, but Kanda limped up the steep slope to kneel by the mare's head. He laid one hand on her cheek, just below her terrified eye, and turned his head slightly to address the other two men.

"My sword," was all the raven-haired swordsman said, but the words rang with the authority of command even through the slight wheezing of his breath. Allen moved mutely to the edge of the trail and picked up the Innocence blade by its dark hilt. It seemed to consume to heat from his fingers, absorbing his strength from his living flesh. The cursed teen shivered. It was the first time he had ever handled the blade and felt the true intensity of its purpose. He hurried back to Kanda, eager to hand over the unnerving weight, heavy as death itself, of the swordsman's Innocence. The Japanese exorcist received the weapon without a word of thanks with his left hand and grunted softly when the movement jostled his damaged ribs.

Allen practically jumped away when he was relieved of his burden, but despite the increase in physical distance, the Innocence's chilly aura hovered over him as strongly as ever. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood straight up and a shiver ran down his spine. _Shit_, Inner Allen hissed. _How can he carry that thing around with him all the time?_ Once again, Allen found himself agreeing with his own sentiments. _It's strange though. Mugen's never felt like that before, even when Kanda was threatening someone with it_. Out of the corner of his eye, the cursed teen noticed the look Samuel was directing at him and he shook his pale head to clear it.

The cloudy sky above rumbled and the dark clouds roiled like boiling water. Icy rain trickled down for a moment, then, as if some mighty celestial tap had been ripped open, curtains of frigid water came sheeting down from above, drenching the trio to the skin in seconds. There, in the darkness under the storm, Kanda laid Mugen's vicious edge against the mare's throat, and, his action caught in the brilliant white light of the lightning, cut deeply though the flesh, severing the thick veins that pulsed there. The mare's screams were sheared into a bubbling whistle and crimson gouts of blood splattered over the swordsman's pale face, hid black and white uniform, his trembling hands until he was drenched in a monochrome scarlet.

Allen watched in revulsion as gore spread in a widening circle, fine trials of red fluid running down the steep slope and dripping over the edge of the cliff in a morbid waterfall to be carried away by the howling winds. Kanda never moved his hand from the horse's face while the mare's struggles became more and more feeble, then ceased altogether. The dark-haired exorcist stayed kneeling for several long moments, then lifted his blood-stained hand from the mare's chestnut cheek to close her staring brown eye gently. Silently, he moved to the mare's side and loosened the girth strap and breast band so that he could pull the saddle from the mare's back.

"Let's go," Kanda said while he turned holding the bloodied tack, his voice oddly monotone. Drops of cardinal oozed from the saturated hems of Kanda's uniform, making the stoic exorcist appear like some angel of death walking off the field of battle bearing his gory prize. The image was completed when the stiff winds caught the edges of Kanda's uniform, lifting his raven hair and inky jacket do they flared behind him like wings and a jagged slash of lightning reflected eldritch blue from Kanda's half-lidded eyes and the metal of the saddle.

The Finder and the pale exorcist drew back when the macabre specter that was Kanda passed them on the way down the slippery trail. The two remaining horses had stopped perhaps a hundred yards away on a broad switchback in the trail and they snorted nervously as the copper reek of spilt blood wafted to them from the Japanese man's drenched form. He caught their trailing reins in one bloody hand and held them until the other two arrived. The gelding's reins were passed to Samuel, who jumped up into the saddle. Allen found himself clutching the stallion's reins as Kanda walked slowly to the stud's side, the paused to lean heavily on the horse's broad shoulder to catch his breath. Allen and Samuel watched the struggling exorcist worriedly as he peeled his gore-soaked body away from the stallion's grey hairs, leaving a bloody smear, and awkwardly hefted the mare's stained saddle onto the stallion's much-broader back. Kanda tightened the girth around the stud's belly, pulling the ill-fitting saddle down onto the stud's unblanketed back, then staggered to the stirrup, heaving himself onto the stud's back in a grotesque lurch. A short, sharp gasp of pain left the exorcist's lips and he slumped forward over the saddle horn.

Allen and Samuel exchanged glances and silently decided who Allen was going to ride behind. The pale exorcist moved to stand next to the tall stud's stirrup after passing the reins up to Kanda and found himself staring up at thigh-high leather boots sparkling with ruby droplets of blood.

"Um," Allen hummed slightly, tapping Kanda's booted foot gingerly. "Could you move your foot?" The wounded exorcist gazed blearily down at the shorter teen. Allen could almost hear Kanda's waspish refusal and the Japanese man hadn't even opened his mouth yet, so he was intensely surprised when Kanda slowly shifted his booted foot out of the stirrup. After a brief pause while the cursed teen recovered from his shock at the swordsman's uncharacteristic acceptance, Allen pushed one foot into the stirrup and grabbed hold of the horn and the cantle. The stallion was taller than the white-haired boy had expected and the cursed teen ended up hopping on one foot for a while before leaping up behind Kanda in an ungainly, ungraceful flop. The stallion snorted and tossed his head at the sudden increase in weight on his back, but stood firm while his burdens shifted. Allen stared around a bit, searching for a handhold. His eyes settled on the cantle and he gave it serious consideration. Just then, Kanda settled back into the saddle and the space between his flesh and the smooth leather vanished. The motion sent the stench of fresh blood washing over the shorter exorcist.

_Damn_, the younger exorcist sighed mentally and rejected the cantle. _The saddle horn? No, too awkward_. Deeper in his mind, Inner Allen cackled with glee totally inappropriate for the current situation. _Oh, yes. __Grab the saddle horn. I'm sure Kanda will love to have your arms around him and your hands nearly in his lap_. For a moment Allen was grateful that his face was hidden behind the Japanese exorcist's back because he was sure that his cheeks were burning scarlet. There was another long pause while Allen's thoughts whizzed around in his head pointlessly and the black-haired exorcist and the brown-eyed finder finally got tired of waiting in the pouring rain on treacherous ground for the youngest group member's decision. The sound of the brown gelding's hooves was the cursed teen's only warning before Kanda shoved his foot back into the recently-vacated stirrup and nudged the stallion into movement. A quick jolt made Allen yelp and fall sideways, sliding across the horse's smooth rump.

"Shit!" he yelped, his pale hair flapping around his face, and the smaller exorcist latched onto Kanda's thick white belt to keep himself from falling completely off of the horse. His desperate grasp pulled the belt up Kanda's trim waist to press against Kanda's ribs and the swords master slashed backwards with one vicious elbow in retaliation, managing somehow to stab Allen's leg with Mugen's sheathed blade as well.

And so they went on in silence broken only by the sounds of the horses and Allen's grumbles, maneuvering through the hairpin turns and the wicked cutbacks in the trail slowly, twisting down the side of the steep mountain at a careful, deliberate pace while streams of water running the color of rust spilled over the sheer rock. The sky above rumbled again, splitting the gloom with white-hot tongues of lightning. The soft hiss of rain was their constant companion and hard droplets ricocheted off of the stone, their faces, and the horses' bodies. The drumming of falling water was muted when the three reached the base of the mountain and guided their tired mounts onto the muddy dirt track that would lead them to the estate whose roofs they had glimpsed earlier.

Kanda shivered abruptly when they passed onto a portion of the narrow trail overhung with sheltering dark-green pine boughs. Allen could feel the tremors of the lithe body before him through his grip on the other's narrow waist and he unconsciously shifted closer, tucking himself more tightly under the ridge of the cantle.

"Are you alright?" the grey-eyed teen asked quietly, leaning up slightly to speak in the older man's ear. Samuel eased up beside them so that the two horses trudged side-by-side through the fetlock-deep mire.

"Kanda?" the Finder prompted when the swords master proved unresponsive.

"Kanda!" Allen exclaimed worriedly as the stallions reins slid from the raven-haired man's grasp. His shivers increased until his entire form quaked like one in the throes of a seizure and he began to slide sideway in the rain- and blood-slicked saddle. Mugen rattled in its sheath and Kanda let out a moan like a wounded animal, his eyes wide open but unseeing. The horses kept moving at their plodding pace, seemingly ignoring the plight of their passengers.

Icy fear gripped the cursed teen, who wrapped his arms around Kanda's upper chest to hold the insensate exorcist on the horse's back. Kanda was completely unaware of this; he could only hear their voices faintly, as though from a great distance. Pale light, harsh in its astringent whiteness, stretched on endlessly, featurelessly before him. His own long, inky black hair fell into his eyes, stinging them, but he could not close them or move his hands to brush it away. Instead, a matching darkness crept out from the strands, seeping out in a shadowy veil like ink running on wet paper, and the swordsman felt as though he were choking. He gasped for breath, his wheezes scratching at his throat. Allen's shrieks went unheard and the swordsman's body went limp. He crumpled in the saddle, supported only by the parasite-bearing exorcist, his head falling back onto Allen's shoulder. The voices he had heard, too faintly to be recognized, faded away into a soft, breathless hush and his dark lashes fluttered shut as he slipped into complete unconsciousness.

The rain poured down in mute witness to the clamorous cries of the Finder and the pale exorcist as they struggled with the unresponsive bulk of the Japanese man, further drenching their already-sopping clothes and stinging the laid-back ears of the two remaining horses, who continued down the muddy morass of the trail to a last, sharp turn. The scraggly forest opened up and there, barely a hundred yards away, stood the towering wrought-iron gates of the mansion.

* * *

(appears from the swirling mists of the unknown) Hi, guys. Did you know that this chapter has actually been completely done for about two months now and that I just didn't have time to type it up? I hope you haven't given up on me. Anyway, any questions? I might answer them if I don't have to give away my plot to do so, but there's no harm in trying. Thank you for reading and sticking with me.

As a side note, I have discovered that I really do enjoy beating Kanda up, so look forward to more in the future. I'll say it again, it's important! Look forward to chaper seven, it's already started.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: While the Sky Wept

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Last chapter: _The rain poured down in silent witness to the clamorous cries of the Finder and the pale exorcist as they struggled with the unresponsive bilk of the Japanese ma, further drenching their already-sopping clothes and stinging the laid-back ears of the two remaining horses, who continued down the muddy morass of the trail to a last sharp turn. The scraggly forest opened up and there, barely a hundred yards away, were the towering wrought iron gates of the mansion._

* * *

A few brief moments later, the Finder and the young exorcist were on foot and tussling with the boneless weight of the raven-haired Japanese man while simultaneously fiddling with the latching mechanism of the gate.

"Bugger!" Samuel growled, sucking on the unlucky finger that had been pinched by the heavy spring of the lock. His nursing of his wounded appendage thoroughly distracted him from supporting his limp comrade so Allen found himself staggering with the sudden application of increasing increments of weight of unconscious flesh. Kanda's feet hit the ground with a dull thud and the brown-haired Finder swore again, looking sheepish. Allen glared at him furiously. Kanda's head was beginning to vanish into the neck of his uniform as Allen's grip on the fabric of his sleeves pulled the long coat up and gravity pulled the flaccid body down.

"Sorry," Samuel said quickly, his face apologetic as he bent to snatch up the booted feet once more. "I can't figure out how this damn thing opens."

"Let me try," Allen sighed quietly and the two shuffled back and forth awkwardly with Kanda's body dangling by his limbs like some bizarre marionette between them. Once in front of the heavy lock, Allen faced a new dilemma.

"Hey, Samuel," Allen finally spoke. "Let's put him down for a bit while I work on this, okay?"

"You were the one who didn't want him on the ground in the first place," Samuel snapped back and the two of them dropped their unconscious companion unceremoniously on the crushed gravel apron of the path leading to the mansion. Both of the two left standing felt suddenly contrite and the pale teen bent and checked the back of Kanda's head, his gentle fingers probing under the long dark hair.

"No blood. He's okay," Allen reported.

"I guess okay is a relative thing at this point because generally being completely unconscious for no apparent reason hardly qualified as being okay," the stressed Finder remarked quietly.

"Yes, well," Allen muttered as he began working with the lock. He produced a long-handled pick from somewhere inside of his long-sleeved jacket. The brown-haired Finder glanced at his askance but didn't ask. Allen caught the elder man's eyes and just grinned at him from under a fringe of white bangs.

"I had to pick up a few tricks when I was with General Cross," he said by way of explanation and his expression became fierce and dark, much like when he played cards. A few pointed, sharky teeth had appeared and the oh-so-innocent vibes that the pale boy usually radiated were replaced by malicious waves of ill-intent.

"Right," the Finder breathed out slowly while edging back from the younger boy whose attitude swiftly shifted again as he returned to his commonplace cheerful mood once more.

"Old locks like these are a piece of cake," the grey-eyed exorcist chirped confidently, removing the glove on his left hand in order to more accurately guide the hooked end of the pick which was currently inserted deep into the bowels of the lock. Clockwork intestines were prodded gently before Allen's wandering lock pick found what it was looking for: a place that, when twisted slightly to the left, caused the sturdy inner workings of the lock to shift and glide against each other. The heavy bar at the top of the lock sprang open and Allen stepped back from his handiwork with a wide smile.

"Amazing," the Finder praised with relief evident in his voice, rubbing his hands together.

"Isn't it?" Allen agreed in a rare moment of self-congratulation. The rain was pattering down just as heavily as ever, completely unconcerned with the scene playing out below. The sky above rumbled threateningly and Allen glanced up, his pale grey eyes reflecting the darker hues of the grim rain clouds. The smile slipped from his face and the delicate-looking exorcist's features rearranged themselves in a somber frown.

"Get the horses please, Sam," Allen directed wearily. The Finder slicked back his short brown hair with one careless hand and the result was a thatch of messy chocolate as each strand was plastered to the others by the heavy application of water.

"Sure," the strong, chestnut-eyed man said, leaving Kanda on the ground with Allen so he could collect the horses, who had drifted back into the semi-shelter of the trees. The rain had made the rusty smear on the stud's shoulder run so that the dark, ruddy color trailed down its leg to stain the wispy hairs of its fetlock. Neither horse responded to the gentle pressure that Samuel exerted on their bridles when he had gathered up their reins, choosing instead to lock their knees and allow their necks to stretch rather than take a step. Sam's brown eyes narrowed and he swore quietly then pulled harder, putting his weight into the movement. The horses resisted for a while longer before capitulating to his wished ungracefully. Gravel crunched softly as the Finder led the exhausted animals onto the path. Allen acknowledged their approach with a nod of thanks as he beckoned for the brown-haired man to help him.

"Are you going to put him on a horse?" Samuel asked, referring to Kanda as he looped the grey stud's reins around one of the bars of the gate.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to carry him and unless you can get him to stand up and walk, there's no other choice. Or would you like to carry him on _your_ back?" Allen would have liked to have infused his words with sarcasm, but he found that his emotions had flat-lined during the Finder's brief absence.

"We should probably put him on my horse," was Samuel's response. "The grey Kanda was riding is limping."

"Fine, just help me lift him," the cursed teen replied, bending down to grab Kanda's wrists. The Finder returned to his post at the swordsman's feet, but made no move to hoist his end of the body. Just as Allen found his emotions creeping back in the form of irritation, Samuel chuckled.

"What?" Allen griped.

"You know, they say that turkeys will drown themselves by looking at the sky when it rains…" the older man's voice trailed off and the two of them watched the fat droplets of water splatter on Kanda's face, pooling in his eyes to run from the corners like tears. One errant stream slipped off of the Japanese man's lips and ran into his nose. He sneezed.

"Well, he's not dead yet and he's not drowning so he must not be a turkey," Allen reasoned with mock seriousness, glad to have a break in the tense and depressing atmosphere.

"Fancy that."

The two companions stared at each other as though daring their counterpart to laugh. The corners of the Finder's mouth twitched.

"I guess we had better get going," Samuel suggested in order to hide his laughter in the face of Allen's seeming disapproval. Allen nodded vigorously, his white hair fluffing out around his head, not trusting himself to speak and the two of them bent to grip their opposite ends of Kanda's body. They lifted and Kanda's head slipped entirely into his jacket. The white belt ended up around his lower chest. Allen hastened to straighten the swordsman's apparel, dumping the black-haired head on the ground in his rather thoughtless response.

"Allen, calm down," Samuel rebuked. "Just let me take him." Allen began to protest unhappily, but the older and larger man just shoved him out of the way and scooped Kanda up in his strong arms. Pale hair shielded Allen's expression from view, but did nothing to hide that he was sulking. The Finder's long and elastic temper finally snapped.

"Are you going to continue being worthless or are you going to get your scrawny ass up on that gelding so Sleeping Beauty here doesn't fall off?" Samuel snarled, his chocolate-colored eyes hard and flashing with anger. Allen flushed red, his pale skin burning with mingled embarrassment and reciprocal fury. Pale grey eyes became slit-like with rage as the slender exorcist glowered at his only conscious companion. He opened his mouth to reply, cold words already poised on the tip of his tongue, when the Finder cut him off before he could even begin.

"Will you help him or not?"

Their glares met in midair, practically frying the hapless air molecules trapped in between. Suddenly as though shocked by their own actions, both of them broke their eyes away from the deadlock. A queasy feeling of guilt curled in Allen's visceral regions when he and Sam came to the mutual realization that they had been taking the foul mood brought on by Kanda's inexplicable illness, interminable periods of rain, and a lingering sense of foreboding that had dogged them since they had first learned of their mission out on each other.

"Sorry," Allen muttered ashamedly.

"It's alright. I wasn't exactly on my best behavior either," the Finder offered. His grey-eyed companion didn't push him for a full apology, choosing simply to leap up onto the brown-haired man's stolid gelding. Samuel passed Kanda's limp body up to him like so much luggage. Once the two exorcists were settled on the none-too-pleased horse, Samuel untied the gelding and the stud from the heavy gate and pushed open the heavy, iron-barred portal. It swung back ponderously, gliding silently if slowly on its 

thick, well-oiled hinges. Samuel's worried eyes settled on Allen briefly and the exorcist, who was now the mission leader by default, nodded for the Finder to continue. Sam's Adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed nervously, but the eldest member of the little trio was equal to his fear and continued down the drive, gravel popping under the horses' hooves and Samuel's booted feet. Allen's knuckles turned white with the force of his apprehensive grip on Kanda's white belt as the Finder stepped under the hefty stone arch that framed the elaborately wrought gates. His grey eyes fastened momentarily on a small iron figure affixed in the dead center of the stone arch above the gates. A sense of familiarity welled up in the white-haired exorcist's mind, but before he could examine the figure more closely, it was hidden behind a good two feet of stone: they had passed under the arch and through the gates.

An indefinable fission of energy crackled across Allen's skin, making his hair stand on end. Kanda let out a long, broken moan and moved for the first time since his collapse in an attempt to hide his face in the crook of Allen's neck. The stricken exorcist trembled in his younger compatriot's arms and the pale, delicate-looking teen held him closer as he tried to stop the shaking. Samuel's face was drawn tight with concern as he paused shortly to shut the gates and restore the padlock to its rightful place before continuing up the walk.

The mansion that slowly drew closer was as cold and austere as the mountains that surrounded it. No light showed in its windows, adding an air of desolation to the place that was reflected in the silvery-grey of its weathered shingle siding, The steeply-pitched roofs with their many gables and thick green tiles matched the jagged skyline of the evergreen grove that huddled around the ends of the manor house, framed between the blocky shapes of the many chimneys. The entire effect was one of fallen grandeur and a brief pang of regret struck the travelling companions at the state of faint disrepair the once-magnificent Gothic-style mansion had fallen into. Rainwater leapt in glittering arcs from the gaping mouths of a few gargoyles that leaned out from the roof.

"Do we just go knock at the door?" Allen asked as Samuel drew the two tired horses around the circular sweep of the gravel drive at the entrance.

"I guess," Samuel responded, sounding doubtful. They stopped at the bottom of a wide flight of stairs leading up to the heavy oaked front doors. Rain continued to splash down on them, further mussing their already-bedraggled appearances.

"This should be good," the pale exorcist quipped acidly. "Knock, knock! We're the exorcists from the Black Order who were sent to investigate the disappearances. Don't mind all of the bloodstains and the mud and the overall sad condition we're in. Oh? The unconscious one? No problem, he'll wake up soon enough!" Samuel met Allen's satirical rendition of their greeting with a wince.

"Sounds pretty bad," he admitted regretfully. "No one is going to let us in the way we are."

No sooner than he had finished speaking, one of the thick double-doors swung open. Bright, warm, golden light spilled out and down the steps, piercing the rain like a lighthouse beacon.

"My goodness! Just bring yourselves and your horses around to the back and I will find a place for both you and them." The voice was strong but showed signs of age in its gritty quality. It took on a scolding tone when they didn't make any motion to comply. "You will catch your death of the cold out there. Hurry along."

Allen and Samuel exchanged glances over the gelding's ears. The Finder shrugged one shoulder and the two of them, the horses, and their unconscious burden set out around the corner of the house, passing trellises laden with withered scarlet roses. Windows drifted by, empty and dark. Two right-hand turns slipped past and they found themselves facing a long, low stable lit softly from within by a straw-colored glow. Framed in one of the open doors, the same old man who had met them at the front waited. He stood aside as Samuel led the two footsore horses into the sweet-smelling miasma of straw and feed and manure that filled the stable. With a groan the tall stud sank down onto his knees to rest his soft grey nose on the dusty floor. The gelding made as if to follow suit until Allen hauled its head back up by dragging at its mane since Samuel still held the reins.

"How fortunate that you have arrived before the storm blew in. Your horses seem most tired," the old man observed, smiling benevolently.

"Yes," Samuel agreed distractedly as he dropped the reins and moved to haul Kanda from the gelding's back. Allen sighed with grateful relief when he was stripped of his burden and swung himself down from the broad brown back to land stiffly and flatfootedly.

"Ouch," he hissed under his breath before turning to address the elderly gent with a bow. "My name is Allen Walker and the man in white is Samuel…" there was a tiny hesitation as the white-haired exorcist discovered that he had no idea what the Finder's last name was, but he rallied magnificently and continued, "and our…_indisposed_ companion is Kanda Yu. We are from the Black Order, here to look into the recent disappearances. We were wondering if you had any information that you would be willing to give us." While the words spilling out of the cursed teen's mouth were calm and courteous, inside he was desperately hoping that their aged benefactor might be willing to allow them to stay in the mansion to recover.

"I am pleased to make you acquaintance," the old gentleman responded with a small, elegant though slightly age-stiffened bow. "My name is Nigel Harrison. You are welcome to stay here for the duration of your investigation. Please feel free to stable your horses and then come to the door. There will be a servant there to show you to your rooms. After a suitable interval, there will be dinner and then we will talk. Will that be acceptable?" Allen's eyes watered with tears of gratitude at the mention of shelter food and rest.

"We would love to accept your offer, thank you so much," the words were practically blubbered out. Samuel shook his head lightly at the grey-eyed exorcist's lack of decorum, but Nigel did not seem to be bothered. Instead, the wiry old man bestowed a fatherly smile upon him before sweeping away toward what was presumably the back door, his step firm and elegant.

Samuel settled Kanda in a convenient pile of straw and then he and Allen made swift work of tending to the horses. The rain continued to fall outside, but in the warm, light atmosphere of the stable, neither could bring themselves to care. Half an hour later, they left the horses resting in two loose boxes, the tack drying on the saddle-racks, and followed a narrow gravel path from the stables to the mansion's back door with Samuel once again carrying Kanda and Allen laden with their luggage. The Finder raised his hand and knocked and the door sprang open almost instantly to admit the trio into a wide, tiled room. A middle-aged servant closed the door behind them and plucked the luggage from a protesting Allen's hands. A second servant, also middle-aged but female, laughed quietly at the white-haired teen's antics.

"Please calm down sir," she scolded gently between peals of laughter. "Let Lane take your things for you so you can help the other gentleman with your friend as we go upstairs."

"Upstairs?" Allen questioned her.

"Yes, the master left instructions for us to put you up in the guest rooms."

Once more the exorcist's clear grey eyes filled with joyful tears and once more Samuel found himself embarrassed for his compatriot who had so obviously experienced little kindness under General Cross's tutelage. The maid smiled at him in a motherly fashion, revealing deep dimples before she resumed her brisk attitude.

"Lane, get those things upstairs and run baths for our guests," she ordered while flapping her blindingly white apron at him like a goose-girl at her flock.

"Yes, ma'am," Lane responded hastily before shuffling off with the damp, stained luggage slung around him. The Finder sent up a silent word of thanks that nothing short of total inundation could render the inner waterproof lining ineffective. The maid watched the other servant go with stern eyes then directed her attention back to her three guests.

"Well, let's get you out of those filthy clothes," she finally ordered, brandishing an empty laundry basket. "There are robes on the pegs over there for you to wear, but guest or not, I won't let anyone track mud and blood and water through this house. The carpets and furniture are older than you are."

Allen was mortified. It was one thing to strip down in a private train compartment with only other men around, though it had certainly been an embarrassing experience, and another thing entirely to do the same in front of a middle-aged, unknown woman. Samuel shot him an amused glance as he pulled off his white cloak and tossed it in the basket with a soft flop. The cloak was followed quickly by his shirt and then the Finder toed out of his boots and pulled off his soaking socks.

"The point is to have a system," the Finder explained, relishing Allen's discomfort while he pulled on one of the robes and tied it shut. In less than ten seconds, Samuel had his pants off without ever exposing himself indecently. The white-haired teen frowned and followed suit, successfully mimicking the elder man with only one minor mishap that briefly revealed quite a bit of pale skinned thigh. Kanda was a bit harder to deal with because he was completely limp so it was like manipulating an over-cooked noodle through a series of tubes. By the time he was changed the robe was a little worse for wear, Allen was rubbing his hip where the end of Mugen's sheathe had bumped into him, and the woman was blushing slightly and eyeing the tall leather boots that were now draped over a bench with no small measure of speculation. Lane returned at that moment and the maid shoved the loaded laundry basket into his arms.

"Take care of this," she commanded him. "And you two come with me. Bring your friend."

"But Lillian!" Lane called after them as she led them through the stately halls and up a wide, sweeping staircase. He was ignored entirely and was soon lost to sight as the little group reached the second floor.

"Your baths have already been run. It is about 4:30 now; dinner will be served at six. There are bell-pulls just inside the doors if you need any help with anything," Lillian rattled off quickly, sounding as though 

she was reading off of a familiar list. "Young man, this will be your room." They had stopped in front of a door almost at the end of the passage that extended to the right of the staircase.

"Where are the others' rooms?" Allen asked. An odd tickle of foreboding had been building in his mind since they had entered the house and he wanted to know where he could find Samuel and Kanda should the need arise.

"The elder gentleman's room is down the hall on the opposite side of the stairs, three doors down on the left. Your other friend's room is just to the right of you at the end of the hall. Would you like me to show you?"

"No, thank you," Samuel said thankfully, shifting Kanda's dead weight in his arms. "I'm sure I can find it."

"Well, then," Lillian smiled, flashing her dimples at them again. "I'll just be off. Remember to use the bell-pulls if you need anything." She turned and swept back down the hall to vanish as she descended to the first floor with her crisp brown uniform dress floating out behind her.

"You go take your bath," Samuel directed in a conversational fashion as soon as she was gone. Allen wondered if Lillian's mannerisms, specifically her commanding nature, had rubbed off on the Finder after so short an exposure. "I'm going to dunk Kanda in his bath a couple of times to get the blood off then put him to bed."

"Don't you want a bath, too?" Allen frowned at his brown-haired companion.

"Of course," Samuel responded a little waspishly. "But we can't just leave Sleeping Beauty in the hall for the servants to trip over and, not to be deliberately rude, you don't smell or look very good. I think that it has a lot to do with riding the rest of the way here while holding onto Kanda, who's soaked in horse blood and reeks like carrion."

"Is it really that bad?" Allen asked sheepishly after a brief pause during which he had made a concerted effort to discretely sniff at himself. The Finder winced.

"Yeah, it's pretty bad. Kanda's worse though if it makes you feel any better."

"No, it doesn't," the cursed exorcist bit out. "I think you have a great idea so if you'll excuse me, I'm getting in the bath." With that, Allen darted into his room and pulled the door shut behind him before practically sprinting into the adjoining bathroom. Allen's jaw dropped.

The bathroom was huge, all white marble and glossy fixtures. The white-haired teen wasn't sure whether he should be delighted or appalled by the grandiosity of the room and its aura which, while it was not as large, or as cold, or as impressive as the gothic or ultramodern, depending on the area, structure that was the Black Order castle, was still imposing enough to make the poor boy think twice about jumping into the vast tub flush with the floor and overflowing with bubbles. Still, his excitement at being presented the opportunity to use a tub nearly large enough to swim in and piled high with spherical soapy delights could not be contained so Allen was forced to split the difference and walk the fine line between his two impulses. The robe hit the ground in a pile of fluffy terrycloth and the now-naked exorcist dipped one pale foot into the bath. His seeking toes vanished under the bubbles up to the ankle before he hit water and was rewarded with the feeling of perfectly heated fluid. He gasped 

with delight, settling his weight on the outstretched foot to descend the stairs into the tub only to discover that there were no stairs, at least on that side of the tub. As a result Allen found himself pitching head-first into the soapy abyss.

There was a huge splash and fountains of soap and water hurtled into the air just to come cascading back down over the pale marble tiles. Meanwhile, back under the bubble layer, the hapless teen was thrashing around in water that was disgustingly deep for a domestic bath. He touched down on the bottom and thrust his head out of the frothy water, gasping for breath. When the surface had finally settled, Allen found that the top of the bubbles grazed the tip of his pointed chin.

"That's just a little dangerous," Allen grumbled. "It's more than enough to drown in and there are no signs or anything." So saying, he leaned back in the water until his feet floated off of the bottom and backstroked to the edge. A small silver dish held assorted toiletries in glass bottles and the under-pampered, over-worked exorcist spent at least five minutes smelling them all and deciding on which one to use before he hauled his prize back to the center of the pool. Somewhere along the way he dropped the stopper and it disappeared into the warm water, but even his nagging sense of guilt was not enough to prompt him to dive down and look for it. Instead he doused his head with the sandalwood scented unguent and scrubbed until his white hair was thoroughly fluffed with bubbles. Just as the soap began stinging his pale grey eyes he dove under and rinsed his hair, spending a truly ridiculous amount of time chasing out the last of the shampoo from the silky strands.

The soap went a little more quickly than the shampoo and he was entirely clean in a matter of moments. Still, he was loath to crawl out of the warm, fragrant water so he loafed around in it for a while longer until his fingertips began to wrinkle. At that point he floundered over to the edge and hauled out onto the marble rim like a tired seal. He snatched up a green fluffy towel from an enormous heap of green fluffy towels and draped it over his head and around his shoulders, massaging the water out of his damp locks.

"Clothes, clothes," the willowy exorcist muttered as he stumped back into his newly-appointed bedroom to find his luggage, which was on a wide bench that spanned the whole foot of the queen-sized bed. He undid the clasps with one hand while reaching in with the other and was rewarded with a sharp bolt of pain from his questing fingers. The pale-haired teen yelped and withdrew his hand to stick his bleeding fingers into his mouth. The luggage wriggled furiously, discharging several pieces of clothing onto the floor before a small, golden ball flopped out looking crumpled and disheveled.

"Timcampy!" Allen garbled from around his fingers while still managing to sound surprised, contrite, and confused. The golem emitted an odd, high pitched, whirring shriek then gaped its jaws. A hologram poured out from the tiny projector, flickering and ghostly in the half-light of the bedroom. Allen found himself wishing that he had taken the time to flip on the lights before he had taken his plunge into his bath, but that thought faded as he watched the little image.

A faux image of Allen stuffed a faux image of Timcampy into the front of his uniform jacket and leapt into a tiny boat with Kanda. There was a blur while Timcampy fast-forwarded through a lot of black. The next image was sideways and half blocked by the dripping edge of Allen's now-removed jacket. Allen and Samuel were standing with their backs toward Kanda, obviously embarrassed by the swordsman's shameless display. The image zoomed in to Kanda's face. His expression was his normal scowl, only lightly relieved by his amusement at the expense of his two companions. Then, as if some internal shutter had been ripped open, the typical boredom was replaced with anger that met in ungodly 

harmony with the vicious cunning inherent in his nature. His broad, calloused hand descended and clamped down over Timcampy's face. Tiny golden wings fluttered uselessly against their constraints as the golem was lifted up to Kanda's eyelevel. Deep blue eyes gazed at and through Timcampy before Kanda shoved his captive roughly into Allen's half-open luggage and zipped the case shut. There was silence and the hologram, which had only been showing black for some seconds now, flicked off.

"You mean to tell me that you've been trapped in my luggage since we got on the train?" Allen asked bemusedly. Timcampy glared as well as a little golden golem can glare and flashed a quick hologram of Kanda during the fight at Matel where Kanda appeared torn and bloody and smashed into a wall. He had superimposed a figure of himself laughing.

"You shouldn't do that, Tim," the cursed teen scolded gently. Timcampy looked slightly abashed but remained defiant. Allen frowned with thought and continued slowly, "but why would Kanda put you in a suitcase?"

Just then, a loud tinkling jangle collided with Allen's eardrums like a train-wreck.

"God, that's awful," he muttered while rubbing gently at one ear. "What _is_ that?" A knock on his bedroom door alerted him to a visitor.

"It's dinnertime, Allen," came Lillian's strong, English-accented tones. "Would you like me to accompany you down to the dining room?"

"Yes, please," Allen replied in his most polite manner as he moved to leave his room. It was about at that time that he noticed a rather strong draught around his nether regions and found that in his intent listening to Timcampy, he had never actually put on any clothes. His pale skin flushed darkly red and he offered a silent thanks that he had not yet gotten to the door.

"Uhm," he stammered slightly. "Can you—can you come back in about five minutes?"

"Certainly," Lillian responded cheerfully. Her amused tone made poor Allen think that she was laughing at him, but she probably was considering how high Allen's voice had jumped in his surprise. He listened carefully to her footsteps as they diminished in the direction of Samuel's room. Once he was sure she was gone, Allen dove for his suitcase and dug out a crisp, white shirt, his thin little red bowtie and his usual black pants then threw them on with an unseemly amount of haste, nearly catching himself in his own zipper in the process. He finished pulling on his vest just as Lillian knocked again.

"Come on, Tim," Allen called to Cross's golem. Timcampy fluttered after the cursed teen like some freakish golden bat and they exited the room into the company of Lillian and Samuel.

"How's Kanda," Allen said by way of greeting.

"He's still out," Samuel responded while scratching his short wet hair absently.

"Would you like me to summon a doctor to look at you friend?" Lillian asked in a concerned voice. Allen and Samuel exchanged looks several times, each wondering what exactly the other was thinking. Finally Allen just spoke cautiously.

"No thank you," the exorcist muttered. "He should be getting up again soon, but I think that it's still too early to be really worried."

They finished their walk to the dining room in reflective silence, passing down the sweeping staircase and through wide mirrored halls into an elegant and gracious wood paneled room. Nigel stood at the head of a mahogany table, waiting for them. Lillian bobbed a curtsy at him before she left quietly and closed the door behind her.

"Please be seated," the elderly gentleman invited while gesturing at the seats to either side of him. "I take it that your companion will not be joining us tonight?"

"No, his is still indisposed," Samuel sighed in a resigned, ultra-formal mode.

"That is a pity. My condolences."

The three sat down with Nigel at the head and Samuel and Allen a little further down on either side. The male servant, Lane, appeared through a side panel and whisked away the fourth, unnecessary setting. Almost immediately, Lillian followed and placed covered, steaming plates into the table in front of each person with exquisite care. Lane came back and filled their cut-crystal goblets with a rich red wine while Lillian removed the covers from their plates. Both servants bowed or curtsied according to gender and left. The side panel closed.

Samuel and Allen had long since frozen, completely afraid of disrupting the graceful routine of the servants or some other such equally absurd thing. Apparently Nigel construed their stillness as respect because he took the opportunity to say grace before starting in on his steak. Allen rallied beautifully in the face of food and was soon stuffing himself with as much steak and potato and salad at one time as was socially acceptable. His accompanying Finder sighed and consumed his own plateful at a more sedate pace.

Dinner passed quietly and pleasantly. When it was over, Nigel's eyes were still popping slightly at the amount of edibles Allen's slim frame could hold.

"Perhaps we should retire to the parlor so that we can converse more conveniently," Mr. Harrison remarked while pointedly directing his gaze at Allen, who was perusing the table for something more to consume.

"I think that might be best," Samuel agreed as his white-haired companion seized some infinitesimally small crumb and gnawed it like a squirrel.

"Very well, this way," their elderly host directed, standing and moving to yet another cunningly hidden wall panel. Samuel tailed him and dragged Allen behind him in a trail of bitter tears.

The parlor was smaller than the dining room, but it still managed to appear far larger due to its ranks of floor-to-ceiling windows that marched down one entire wall. Behind each clear pane of glass a formal garden sprawled out, cloaked in darkness and drenched in rain. Allen could just barely make out the shadowy form of a tall topiary giraffe at one end of the garden.

The dark vista that spread out before them distracted both companions for some time until their attention was reclaimed by the sudden spread of a wash of warm golden light in the dim gloom of the parlor. Lane had entered the parlor in his usual silent way and had lit a fire in the fireplace's cavernous mouth. Samuel made an appreciative noise deep in the throat and moved to sit in a nearby chair in order to better enjoy the radiating warmth and light. Nigel smiled at him benevolently and settled himself into another, similar chair. Across the room the cursed teen's clear gray eyes had fallen on an exquisite painting above the mantel. Its subject was a young woman, unearthly in her beauty with long tresses of golden hair cascading around her in silken showers. Her hands were folded gently on her knees and a small teasing smile played about her lightly painted lips. Her satin and silk gown flowed in frothy waves around her slender body like a cloud of sea-foam green.

"Excuse me," Allen interrupted the light small-talk that had been struck up between the Finder and Mr. Harrison, "but who is that woman in the picture?" Nigel stiffened and straightened perceptibly and the atmosphere of the room grew heavy with dark sadness.

"Her name was Evangeline Graciêr. She was the woman who would have been my wife."

"I'm sorry," the now-ashamed exorcist apologized hurriedly. "I didn't mean to bring up any painful memories."

Tension ebbed and eased from the room and Nigel's expression softened as he gracefully accepted Allen's clumsy apology. "There was no harm done. You could not have known of my relation to her."

The humbled teen slumped under his spiritual burden of causing pain for his elderly benefactor. Samuel noticed and stepped in quickly to prevent any further damage.

"Forgive me for interrupting, sir," Samuel spoke calmly in a dazzling display of interventional mediation. "You said you might have some information about the recent disappearances."

"Yes. I assume from your dress that you two are associates of the men who came earlier?" Nigel's face assumed grave lines and he settled more deeply in his chair while folding his hands in his lap.

"You saw the Finders?" Allen blurted in a rush, hoping to hear good news to contradict the terrible story he had been told on the train.

"Ah, yes, they did introduce themselves as such though I had forgotten. Yes, I saw many Finders. I do dislike being the bearer of ill news, but I feel obliged to tell you—I am very sorry—that none of them are currently…they have all passed on."

"Oh." The cursed teen slumped where he stood and lowered his head enough that a fine film of his silky white hair fell over his eyes so that he could hide the tears that pricked at their corners. Samuel, too, felt the loss of the ten Finders with whom he had worked, lived and fought.

"So Kazuki really is dead after all," the strong, brown-haired man mulled quietly.

"Did you perhaps come to return their bodies to their families?" their aged, stately host asked in sympathetic tones. His question was mostly wasted as both of his guests were too involved in their own thoughts to respond immediately.

_Damn it, Komui!_ Allen raged internally. _Ten people dead and for what? We know nothing more now that when we started! Return their bodies to their families? No! We can't even do that!_ Something of great importance niggled at the back of his mind until the young, emotionally overtaxed exorcist seized hold of it and pulled it into the realm of conscious thought. _Wait. Bodies?_ He followed up his thought with a question to Nigel who continued to wait patiently.

"Their bodies are still here?"

"Yes," the gentleman responded and rubbed the back of one hand to soothe his arthritic knuckles. "They are here, actually, in the crypt. I must confess that I was not sure where to send their bodies or even news of their death, so I placed them in the crypt with my own predecessors."

By this time Samuel had recovered from his grief sufficiently to allow conversation and, after wiping a stray tear from his cheek, he spoke in soft tones: "We will call the Order headquarters and have them send a dispatch to take the Finders back. May we see the bodies?"

"Of course," their host seemed surprised that the Finder felt that he had to ask for such a thing. "Though perhaps you would wish to wait until the morning when you are less overwrought. Already it is quite late."

Samuel opened his mouth to object to this suggestion, but was not able to give voice to his dissent as Allen, having recognized the merits of Nigel's statement, smoothly directed the conversation down a different track.

"You wouldn't be able to tell us about the other disappearances, would you?"

"Other disappearances?" Nigel mused. "Yes, there were four before the first Finder arrived and another villager was found dead later. Four young ladies and a little boy."

"Where were they when they went missing? They did go missing, right? They didn't…aren't like the Finders?" Allen stumbled over his last words as he sought something that sounded less unpleasant than 'die.'

"There is a road that cuts through the forest on the back of the property that the villagers use to take goods to the market some twenty miles further west. All five of the victims disappeared on that road," informed the dapper old gent. Allen's face went slack with stunned realization.

"You mean we all nearly died on that cliff getting here when we could have taken a road safe enough to take wagons on?" the poor teen was nearly in tears and he shook his head in an attempt to alter the truth through sheer denial.

"I will assume from your reaction that you went over the mountain. Your road is the shortest, most expedient route," there was sympathy in Nigel's voice as he explained. "The villager's road is some sixty miles longer but infinitely safer. At least safer in the past."

"But the five villagers' bodies weren't found?" Sam queried, automatically beginning the questioning that was ingrained in every Finder's psyche.

"That is correct. I myself saw every site from which one of the disappearances or a Finder's death was reported."

"You must really get around a lot," Allen remarked admiringly as if he, too, wished to be so spry in his old age.

"Goodness, no," Nigel half-laughed. "I have to take the carriage. I go because it is my responsibility to investigate the major incidents on my property."

"Would you take us to these places in the morning after we pay our respects to the Finders?"

"Certainly. I will have Lane hitch my horses after breakfast so that the carriage is ready whenever you would like to go."

The door creaked open behind them and Lillian slipped in, wiping her hands on her crisp, starched white apron.

"Is there anything more you would like before you retire, sirs?" she inquired politely after completing her short curtsy.

"No, thank you, Lillian," Nigel replied before returning his attention to Sam and Allen. "It is quite late. I suggest that we all retire for the night and reconvene for breakfast in the morning. Lillian will show you to your rooms."

Allen and Samuel gazed blankly at their host for some moments before Lillian discreetly cleared her throat and made it obvious that they had been dismissed. Blushing slightly and rueful, the two Black Order companions rose and trailed after the maid like ducklings after their mother. Allen was the first to peel away from the line and having uttered a half-hearted goodnight to Samuel who barely acknowledged it with a short nod, the white-haired teen slipped into his room and shut the door behind himself with a grateful sigh.

"Gods, what a day," he groaned and raked one hand through his unruly mane until the pale hairs stuck out at a thousand different angles, whereupon he gave up on pushing his worries out of his head by manual force alone. He sighed again and turned to face the wall that divided his room from Kanda's.

"So inconsiderate," Allen grumbled. "It would figure that he would choose to remain completely out of it at the worst possible time." So saying, the exorcist toed off his lace-up boots and flung himself face-down into the vast guest bed standing back and center against the far wall. After a while he pulled off his little red necktie and rolled over to crawl underneath the downy blankets. A yawn bisected his head.

"G'night, Tim," the cursed teen called into the pleasant darkness of his room to the little golem who had followed and recorded everything faithfully. Timcampy fluttered its wings in reply and settled gently onto Allen's head in its customary position just behind Allen's left ear. The pale boy reached out with his red skinned, cross-marked hand to draw the mussed bedclothes up to his pointed chin and there in the deep quiet of his bedroom his pale lashes dropped down to brush his high cheeks. Timcampy stretched its wings and snuggled closer to the smooth skin behind Allen's ear, its cold metal skin rubbing the fragile flesh. Distressed slightly by the sensation, the cursed teen tipped his head to trap Timcampy 

against his shoulder. Cross's golem shifted until its wings prodded Allen's cheek and listened to the exorcist's deep, even breaths as he drifted into slumber.

Hours passed quietly, slipping by like a thief in the night. The hands of the clock rolled around the numbered face in a stately waltz until the short, fat hand pointed accusingly at the three. Its companion, taller and slimmer, stood to its rear and directed its head at the bold ten. Timcampy shifted again and recorded the time; a greenish 3:50 a.m. blinked across its little recording lens. The golem's perch stirred in his sleep so that he could clutch at his pillow and wriggle further into his protective cocoon of blankets.

Outside the stars were veiled by low rain clouds that loomed darkly over the steep peaked gables. Water slashed down from above in dense sheets to pound against the thick windows and to rattle about in the gutters on its way to the downspouts. The constant noise f the storm made the mansion seem quieter somehow as it muffled all of the sounds of normal nights: doors opening and closing, clocks ticking, bedsprings creaking softly as their occupants moved to get more comfortable. Still, the rolling tattoo of the rain drumming on the tiled roofs couldn't mask every disturbance so what happened there in the midnight cloaked halls of the dimly lit mansion at 3:37 a.m. did not pass into oblivion unheard.

Allen's peaceful dreams shattered and were blown away like dust in the wind while he thrashed his way back into the realm of consciousness, flinging bedclothes every which way in his haste to untangle himself from the sheets and to scramble from the mattress.

And in the room next door, the sound reverberating against the walls, Kanda howled out another bloodcurdling shriek.

* * *

Hello, all. It has been a truly obscene amount of time since I last updated, but rest easy. Despite all appearances I am not dead. This story will be finished. You will have resolution and explanation and clarification, though not necessarily in that order. On a happier note, aren't you all happy that Kanda is coming back as an actual character rather than just a convenient prop? I am.

Just wait. This story will be even more fun from here on out. Trust me.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Under Cover of Darkness

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Preliminary Author's Note: Here's your warning: this is not a nice chapter. If you are squeamish, you probably didn't make it this far in my story, but for those who did, this chapter definitely earned its 'M' rating.

* * *

_The constant noise of the storm made the mansion quieter somehow as it muffled all of the sounds of normal night: doors opening and closing, clocks ticking, bedsprings creaking softly as their occupants moved to get more comfortable. Still, the rolling drumming on the tiled roofs couldn't mask every disturbance so what happened there in the midnight cloaked halls of the dim mansion at 3:57 a.m. did not pass into oblivion unheard. _

_Allen's peaceful dreams shattered and were blown away like dust in the wind while he thrashed his way back into the realm of consciousness, flinging bedclothes every which way in his haste to untangle himself from the sheets and to scramble from the mattress._

_And in the room next door, the sound reverberating against the walls, Kanda howled out one last bloodcurdling shriek._

* * *

"Kanda!" Allen called just before his feet hit the cold wooden floor. "Shit!" he added when his sleep-numbed feet tangled in the fringe of the oriental carpet under the bed so that he tumbled heavily to the floor. Next door the screaming abated, leaving behind a terrible silence that made the cursed exorcist's gut clench in a nervous spasm. He pushed himself up off of his belly and sprinted out the door, his bare feet sliding painfully on the smooth, waxed boards of the hall floor. He made it to the other exorcist's door in a record time that would have made an Olympic gold medalist proud. Allen's red-skinned left hand closed on the handle and tried to turn the heavy brass knob, only to find that the door was locked. The deadbolt rattled in the jamb as he yanked on the handle.

"Kanda! Kanda, open the door!" Allen yelled, now pounding on the heavy oak door with both fists. The only reply was a nearly inaudible whimper that drove the white-haired exorcist to drastic action; he kicked the door fiercely to break the jamb. He was a little surprised, to say the least, when the door sprang open, unlocked, slammed into the wall, and rebounded into his face. It took several seconds for the stars to fade away, but when the last glittering twinkle winked out of existence Allen gasped with shock.

Across the room, a single large window stood open, its gauzy curtains billowing in the cold, moist breeze that flowed into the dark bedroom from the storm-torn night outside. A tall, knobby figure stood eerily still in the half-light from the wide bay window, its eyes dark holes in a pale face that glistened and reflected the incandescent glow of the forked tongues of lightning that rent the boiling sky. The figure—a man—stepped up onto the broad windowsill and leaned out into the night. Even in the gloomy darkness, Allen could make out short, well-groomed white hair, finely wrinkled cheeks, and a distinctive, stubborn chin.

"Mr. Harrison!" Startlement wrung the words from Allen's lips and the elderly gentleman turned his head to bare his teeth in a mocking grin that made his even, white teeth gleam threateningly. Suddenly, the man leapt from the window with disturbing agility and vanished into the shadows of the formal garden.

"Wait!" Allen shrieked at his rapidly-retreating back. A fierce gust blew a copious amount of rain through the window to create a shallow puddle on the wood floor that soon spread to soak into the edge of the carpet. From the corner of the room where the nebulous darkness hung heaviest came a soft groan that abruptly refocused Allen's attention.

"Kanda?" Allen inquired hesitantly. Once more, he received no response so the pale teen brushed his white hair out of his eyes and advanced until he stood at the foot of a sturdy four-poster bed that dominated the dark corner. Pale grey eyes widened and Allen blanched, color rushing from his face until the scarlet pentagram over his eye stood out vividly.

Kanda lay on the bed spread-eagled and vulnerable, the loose clothing the Finder had dressed him in after his bath laying in pathetic tatters on the sumptuous coverlet. Shallow gashed that oozed sticky blood suggested that his clothing had been cut off by someone carelessly wielding a very sharp blade; this was confirmed by the cold weight of Mugen that lay forgotten on the floor next to the bed, its wicked blade smeared with Kanda's crimson life-fluid. Mugen's sheathe was missing and Allen sought it out until he found it bound to Kanda's wrists in a manner that forced the swords master's arms apart. Further restraints held his wrists to the bedposts and, between the solid wood pillars and Mugen's cold sheathe, Kanda's arms were rendered entirely useless. Pale grey eyes focused on Kanda's wrists, which were torn and bloody where the swordsman's struggles had slashed the harsh cord that bound him across his unprotected flesh. Fine trails of plod traced the hard muscles of Kanda's arms to his shoulders, guiding Allen's disbelieving eyes to the Japanese man's chest. The grey-eyed exorcist felt sick.

Red hickies and purpling bite-marks stood out lividly on Kanda's pale golden skin. The light bruising became heavier and darker until it reached the raven-haired man's hips where a deeply purple hand-shaped bruise marred each side of his body. The next vision that swam before the pale exorcist's horrified eyes forced him to turn away from his fallen companion with both hands clamped over his mouth in an attempt to keep himself from being violently sick. Blood was smeared thickly up the insides of both of Kanda's thighs and stained the sheets below his rump darkly crimson. The powerful muscles of the sword-wielder's legs were trembling and twitching under the gore-streaked skin from the strain of the tight bonds that affixed his ankles to the strong posts at the foot of the bed and a deep gash yawned open on the bottom of his left foot, bleeding sluggishly.

_Oh, my God_, Allen groaned inside, still fighting down the urge to vomit. It was like a scene from his worst nightmares—ones based on some of the things he had seen on dark nights in narrow alleys in the worst cities he had visited with General Cross. _Oh, my God, Kanda…I have to help Kanda_. The sickened, abnormally pale exorcist swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut as he turned back to the bed and its battered occupant. Allen opened his eyes slowly as though he was hoping that everything was just some horrible trick and flinched at the renewed sight of his companion. Shaking uncontrollably, the cursed teen fumbled in his pocket for the worn pocket knife he had taken to carrying some months prior and cut the tough cords at Kanda's wrists and ankles, allowing Mugen's sheathe and Kanda's limbs to drop onto the mattress.

"Kanda? Are you…okay?" Immediately Allen realized the absurdity of the question. He hunched up a little out of reflex, expecting the Japanese man's typical scathing reply. It never came. The parasite-bearing teen uncurled from his defensive ball and slipped his pocket knife back into its pocket, then, for the first time since before Kanda collapsed, allowed his pale grey eyes to seek out his companion's gaze. Allen could feel a warm salt tear slip down his cheek.

Kanda's deep blue eyes, once so bright and sharp and cunning, were dim and dull; no interest or emotion showed in those glassy orbs. Even when freed he lay unresponsive and listless, making no move to protect or shield himself, and Allen, deeply ashamed of his own morbid fascination with the swordsman's damaged form, floundered about until he found a soft, pale blue blanket with which to cover Kanda's naked body. When the cursed exorcist made as if to drape the blanket over the other boy however, Kanda's arms flexed gently and the swordsman, having now discovered that he was no longer bound in his compromising position, responded violently to the sudden presence of another figure above him.

An abstract part of Allen's mind was grateful that, even in the terrible state he was in, Kanda was still physically capable of defending himself. The rest of him was thoroughly occupied with containing the sword wielder, who was making a concerted effort to cause as much damage as possible to poor Allen.

"Kanda! Kanda, stop! It's me, it's Allen!" the white-haired teen yelled while he prevented one of Kanda's fists from permanently rearranging his delicate features. The older man's struggle continued unabated; Allen's pleading exhortations were no more than noise to Kanda's inwardly-turned mind. Unfortunately, Allen was rapidly losing his advantage: even though he was currently in better physical shape than Kanda, _he_ was trying not to hurt the other man; Kanda had no such reservations and was fighting off the perceived attack with marked singleness of mind.

"Kanda—ngh!" Allen's cried were cut off in a loud choking gurgle because Kanda had finally gained the upper hand by pulling Allen down onto the rumpled, blood-stained bedclothes and, after pinning the slighter teen beneath his bare body, wrapped his strong, calloused hands around Allen's throat. _Why does he always go for my throat?_ Allen wondered vaguely while prizing at the other man's grip. His pale grey eyes stared up into the deep blue, eerily vacant gaze of the swordsman attacking him. Long tendrils of tangled, snarled black hair fell all around them, mixing its dark hues with the popping, far-black light bursting behind Allen's eyes as the parasite bearer began to slide into unconsciousness.

"Allen! Allen, Kanda, are you two alright?" Samuel's powerful voice boomed in the stifling room before escaping through the open window where it combined smoothly with the noise of the storm outside. The Finder pounded on the door of Kanda's room until the thick oaken planks shuddered under his heavy fists. Allen could only assume that the fickle door had locked itself again.

Kanda went stiff and still over Allen, listening without actually hearing the Finder's voice. His grip slackened enough that Allen could suck in a few deep breaths that drove away the sparkling not-light that he had been seeing. Kanda still knelt above him, but paid the cursed teen no attention. He was quivering slightly and the muscles of his powerful thighs, heavily marked by his own blood, flexed and relaxed spasmodically. It was clear that the ravaged swordsman was making a decision, God knows what it actually was, but, regardless, Allen settled on his own plan of action. _If he moves again_, Allen explained to himself, _I'll activate Crown Clown and get a grip on him so he doesn't hurt himself or me anymore._ As if he had heard Allen's thoughts, Kanda's stare shifted from the door to Allen's face. The dull complacency in the swordsman's eyes had warped into bestial cunning and glittering, sharp-edged fear. Allen tightened his muscles, preparing himself for invocation. Deeply blue eyes watched his suspiciously. In the background, the Finder's pounding seemed to grow louder and louder.

"Samuel," Allen called, keeping his pale grey eyes fixed on the other exorcist. The pounding stopped.

"Allen! Are you alright? Is Kanda okay?" Samuel shouted, his voice only slightly muffled by the three intervening inches of solid wood.

"I'm fine. Kanda is—Kanda is…anyway, I'm going to try to come unlock the door, so hold on for a second, okay?"

"What's so hard about unlocking a door?" mumbled Samuel in a none-too-flattering tone that was fairly clear about what he thought of Allen's I.Q.. _If only you knew_, the thought sprang unbidden into Allen's mind.

"Kanda?" Allen's address focused the swordsman's attention all the more closely on him. It was like being under a microscope. "I need you to get up so that I can unlock the door." To emphasize his point, Allen sat up slowly. Kanda refused to be moved from his spot, but he did adjust his position so that Allen wasn't quite so close to him. "No, you need to get _off_." Despite his best efforts to the contrary, Allen's intense was easing into irritation at the indigo-eyed exorcist's recalcitrance and the guilt the pale teen generated from being angry at Kanda, who had just suffered a violation of the highest order, made him even more irritated. He lowered his white-haired head mulishly and made as if to stand and push Kanda away.

The reaction was instantaneous and lightning-quick; Kanda dove off the bed, his hands, bloodied by the seeping fluid from his wrists, snatching at Mugen. Allen responded just a little too slowly and his great white claw bloomed into existence inches behind Kanda's lithe body. Growling angrily, the pale exorcist shoved himself away from the bed and stood before his raven-haired counterpart. He winced minutely when he surveyed the Japanese man, who stood with his back to the window and with Mugen held tightly in both hands before him so that its razor-fine blade stood between him and his perceived assailant. A thick rivulet of sticky scarlet ran down the inside of one of Kanda's toned thighs, following the contours of his flesh over his knee and down to his ankle where it dripped onto the cold floor beneath his heel.

"Shit," Allen whispered hoarsely.

"Are you two okay in there? I'm going to open the door now!" A woman's concerned voice accompanied a hurried rapping knock and the jangling of a heavily-laden key ring. A few moments passed before Allen registered the voice as Lillian's, at which the door sprang open to reveal a flustered, motherly Lillian and Samuel, who was nearly tearing his hair out with worry.

"Oh! Oh my goodness!" Lillian gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as her gentle eyes took in the sight of battered Kanda. The Finder paled and went still.

"So now you know," Allen remarked dryly, his voice strained. Kanda's eyes flickered between the three present and his grip on Mugen tightened while the tip of the blade, once held still so firmly, wavered. The swordsman's chest heaved as he panted for air and then, suddenly yet ever-so-slowly, the Innocence blade slipped from his fingers, his frantic eyes rolled back, and he slumped toward the floor. The white-haired exorcist sprang forward to catch his companion, swearing heartily. _Maybe I should invest in a bottle of mouthwash_, a distant part of his mind noted. _Swearing seems to have become habitual lately_.

Kanda landed face-down in Allen's arms, so the pale teen rolled him over, only to nearly drop the Japanese man in shock. He was not, as the white-haired exorcist had thought, unconscious. Instead his deep blue eyes were half-lidded and dull, staring back into Allen's own pale-grey gaze with little thought. His black hair lay strewn messily over his fine features and it fluttered gently with every one of his gasping breaths, never quite flapping free as the soft strands stuck fast to the blood that clotted on his split lips. The cursed teen could feel the thready, rapid pulse of Kanda's heart against his arm. For the first time in his life, Allen caught himself thinking of Kanda as pathetic and was struck by the sudden, irrational urge to hide that weakened side of Kanda from the world.

"I'm going to take him to my room for a bath," Allen said softly, deactivating his Innocence claw so that he could more gently lift the other exorcist's abused body.

"I think that would be best," the maid responded faintly, her eyes fixed on the streaks of blood that slicked Kanda's lower half. Allen pulled Kanda closer to his chest protectively and tightened his grip on Kanda's knee and shoulder, the only available handholds as he cradled the taller man bridal-style. The white-haired exorcist nodded absently on his way out. He walked the short distance between their rooms quickly, not even bothering to close the hall doors behind him. He did, however, close the door between his room and his bathroom firmly before he lowered Kanda onto a hastily-spread towel on the marble-tiled floor. When his lacerated back touched the fluffy cotton fabric, the sword wielder moaned softly and twisted in discomfort.

"Samuel?" Allen yelled at the wall that divided Allen's bathroom from Kanda's suite. "Could you bring Mugen in here, please?"

The Finder appeared a few moments later, Mugen in hand. He lowered his clear brown eyes uncomfortably as he deposited the Innocence sword next to Kanda.

"Do—do you need any help?" he asked, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly. Allen gave him a quick once-over, taking in his obvious desire to be somewhere else.

"No, thank you. I think more people would just make Kanda more uneasy," Allen mumbled by way of response and, no sooner than the words left his mouth, the Finder had made his hasty exit. The pale teen felt a sharp pang of fury at the Finder's behavior, but tried to soothe it away by occupying himself with the necessities of a bath. Kanda stirred unhappily at the rushing noise the steaming water made as it poured out of the taps into the deep, cool pool below. Combined with the dismal patter of the unrelenting rain, the water sounded like an ocean was waging a full-scale war on the manor and its inhabitants. It was not until Allen shut off the crystalline font that Kanda subsided to his previous motionless state, his blood already dyeing the pure-white towel on which he laid a glorious crimson.

"Kanda," Allen urged gently. "You need to get in the bath." Hazy, abyssal-blue eyes rolled towards him, their regard dazed and shattered. "Let's get the blood and the…the blood off of you. But you have to help me out and get in the water first." The raven-haired man blinked slowly at his companion, a slow comprehension dawning in the depths of his gleaming orbs.

"Bean Sprout."

Said boy winced at the sound of Kanda's voice. It was hoarse and cracked from screaming and rasped harshly in the swordsman's throat, so unlike his usual deep-throated throbbing growl. Still, he _had_ 

acknowledged Allen's presence, which was a step in the right direction. He was calming down, too, drifting away from the violent and unpredictable shifts in his behavior, and for once he was showing an inclination to follow Allen's direction because he was slowly crawling to the edge of the bath.

"I'm not sure where the steps are and the bath is really deep," the cursed teen murmured, extending his red-skinned, cross-marked hand to assist Kanda down into the warm water. Kanda paused at the rim of the pool and leveled a less-than-usually-acerbic gaze on that hand. Allen sweatdropped. _Good lord, he wouldn't honestly refuse my help while he's in that kind of condition just because he never takes help from anyone…would he?_ Finally, hesitantly, Kanda stretched out his bloody-wristed, callo0used limb and allowed Allen to take his hand in a firm clasp.

Allen marveled at Kanda's light weight as the raven-tressed exorcist slipped down into the warm water, nearly his entire mass being supported by the cursed teen. Caked gore drifted off of the swords master's body, dried flakes floating up to the water's surface in a gross mockery of flower petals. The once-pure liquid took on a roseate hue when the crusted blood dissolved. Kanda hissed and writhed in the water, splashing it out of the bath in pink waves. Stinging pain burned at the edges of the swordsman's senses as the warm water scalded the damaged flesh at his wrists, ankles, and between his legs.

"Ah! I'm sorry; it's too hot, isn't it?" Allen yelped apologetically, feeling deeply guilty for exacerbating the injured man's discomfort. The red-skinned, cursed hand groped for the handles of the tap to turn on the flow of cold water and Allen's body followed that hand in and deep and sudden lunge. A sharp jerk on the trailing hand yanked the pale teen to a halt and he whipped his snowy head around, lips already slightly parted in rebuke, to see that the impediment to his action was Kanda.

The moody exorcist stood facing away from Allen in his bloodied bath, one strong, scarred hand clamped down on the parasite-bearer's normal wrist. His shoulders were hunched over and his head was lowered, his face nearly completely hidden in the tangled fringe of his once-sleek hair.

"Kanda—?" Allen began, tugging at his wrist. "I can't cool the water of you don't let me go."

"Leave it." Even with a raspy voice, Kanda could still manage the tones of absolute command.

"But—"

"_Leave it_." The swordsman's grip tightened painfully around Allen's wrist and Allen gave in swiftly to the other man's demand just so he could keep his hand. Kanda let go when Allen shuffled on his knees back to his original spot and settled himself cross-legged, rubbing his wrist gently with his cursed hand.

The two of them waited in what would have been companionable silence had the situation not been so dire or if the tension had not hung so thickly in the air, strung tight between the two. After a while, Allen, who could no longer bear the heavy atmosphere, broke the uncomfortable silence.

"Would you like some soap?"

Kanda hesitated then nodded once—a short, swift, barely perceptible dip of his head. The pale teen obligingly fumbled through the silver tray of toiletries that he had conveniently abandoned nearby after his own bath, finally digging up the only bar of soap that wasn't heavily-laden with a scent that Kanda would find girly and would surely reject. In the meantime, Kanda had dampened his hair with a few 

handfuls of grimy water, an action that he had completed so many times in the past that it was forever remembered by his muscles. Ruby droplets of reconstituted blood slid down from the dark strands, spotting the tanned flesh.

Allen passed him the soap, which was accepted with no comment. The Japanese man rubbed the little oblong bar into a frothy foam. The rich scent of sandalwood filled the steam-thickened air and the pale teen sniffed appreciatively. Once the bubbles spilled over the swordsman's hands, he lifted the soap and scrubbed it roughly through his hair. Allen let out a cry of horror.

"You wash your hair with _soap_?"

Kanda stared blankly at Allen, who tugged at his own short mane.

"Are you _joking?_ Do you know how much some of us have spent trying to get hair like yours? Linali is going to _die_."

The cursed teen's overly-theatrical frustration, which he would later admit was untimely and inappropriate given the situation, filtered slowly through Kanda's numbed mind, sinking through his conscience until it hit the impermeable bedrock of Kanda's superiority complex.

"Heh. Heh heh."

Allen froze in mid-tug and peeked through his fringe of bangs at the Japanese swords master. His broad shoulders shuddered occasionally with each dry, cracked laugh. The deep almost-chuckle escalated in pitch and began to border on near-hysterical laughter. While the shorter exorcist was glad to see Kanda move away from the terribly, icy numbness, the deep stillness that he had assumed when he crashed down from the blind animal fear that drove him upon Allen's appearance in his bedroom, Allen was deeply worried by the sudden manic attitude Kanda adopted. _He's just jittery, in shock_, Allen reassured himself. _He'll go back to normal soon._

Sure enough, the strained merriment died down in moments, but the tremors that rocked the swordsman's capable frame did not cease.

_Is he—? No way._ The only remaining option for Kanda's behavior was nigh incomprehensible to the white-haired young man. It was so beyond the ordinary scope, even the imagined scope of Kanda's actions, that Allen felt obligated to crush that niggling thought into a fine powder to be scattered to the winds of regularity; and yet the unimaginable held a certain irresistible attraction that sent the cursed boy crawling around the lip of the pool so that he could see his companion's face.

Allen could feel the onset of a heart attack brought on by surprise. Kanda stared straight ahead, his dark, cloudy blue eyes blurred with viscous, salty tears that slid slowly down the angled planes of his bruised cheeks, lingering like a lover's caress. Poor Allen was highly uncomfortable with this new development and responded with the first thing that came to mind.

"Do you want me to wash your hair?"

Saline-washed eyes flicked in his direction, then the abused swords master slid through the water to the edge of the bath closest to Allen, where the sword-wielder turned his back to the white-haired boy and 

proffered the bubbling soap. Allen accepted the soap gingerly and waffled a bit before depositing it on the marble tiles beside his folded legs.

"I'm, uh, I'm going to use something a little different. Something actually supposed to be used on your hair, okay?"

Kanda nodded once and Allen sifted through a few of the bottles and vials scattered by his earlier search for soap, looking for one that contained shampoo. He uncorked the first one that came to hand and, after briefly considering the best way to proceed, threw caution to the winds and dumped an unnecessarily large amount of the white gel onto the crown of Kanda's head and, so that he couldn't change his mind and back out at the last minute, tossed the glass bottle aside to shatter on the tiles and dug both hands in the thick mass of Kanda's hair.

Both of them stiffened and stilled instantly, not entirely sure either was comfortable with the suggestion now that it was being carried out, but Allen just shrugged and started working at the clumps of dried blood that clung tenaciously to the long black strands of the Japanese man's mane. With a barely-audible sigh Kanda slumped wearily against the edge of the pool. His head sagged on his strong neck until it nearly touched Allen's knees where the pale boy knelt on the edge of the pool.

It was oddly peaceable and Allen was able to momentarily forget that the only reason that Kanda was allowing himself to be touched was because he was seeking some semblance of normalcy in a terrible situation, craving non-violent and non-threatening contact. Kanda's eyelids fluttered sleepily and his body slowly relaxed in the warm water. The sweet smell of the shampoo—Allen realized with some chagrin that, in his haste, he had used a decidedly floral-scented concoction—wafted through the bathroom. The pale pink bubbles formed by Allen's ministrations slipped down over Kanda's shoulders to float on the surface of the water, where Kanda collected them with one hand before lifting the opposite arm out of the water to scrub at it. The cuts on his wrists had reopened in the bath and were streaming blood that stained the golden skin faster than the swordsman could rinse it off.

Seeing this, Allen quickly finished working the filth out of the tips of Kanda's hair, then laid one hand on the Japanese swords master's shoulder. The violated man paused under Allen's hand.

"Rinse you hair, will you?"

Kanda nodded absently and submerged himself. The water and the thick layer of pink bubbles closed over his head, hiding him from view. He was underwater for an increasingly-alarming period of time and it wasn't until Allen had had a sufficient length of time to work himself into a frenzy of worry that he reappeared. The cursed teen blew out a sigh of relief and snatched up the soap.

"Come back over here and keep your wrists away from yourself so you don't get blood on yourself."

Obedient as a child—a state of being that, from Kanda, chilled Allen's blood—the older exorcist glided to the edge once more to stand in front of Allen, his bleeding wrists extended out over the lip of the bath so that the ruby droplets of life-fluid splashed onto the cool marble. Trying hard not to think about what he was doing, Allen re-lathered the soap and gently cleaned the filth from Kanda's face, then his shoulders and arms, lingering at his fingertips and pretending to be removing the ingrained blood from under Kanda's nails when he was really just delaying.

The pale boy continued to fuss about his cleaning, rather hoping that Kanda would snap out of the daze he had fallen into and show some autonomy. But no. The relief of being removed from the room and the situation in which he had been raped, coupled with the mental distance he had put between himself and his body to keep from having to dwell on his own condition, knowing that said body would be safe where it currently was, had combined to make him revert into an almost child-like state, having not yet returned to his normal surly, argumentative, independent self.

With the thought that Kanda was basically a child at the moment held firmly in the forefront of his mind, Allen scrubbed firmly down Kanda's back, then over his hips and up his belly and chest as a parent would. The white-haired boy then blew out a huff of frustration.

"Kanda, I can't reach anything else. You're going to have to do this yourself or sit on the edge of the bath or something so that I can."

Apparently the Japanese man's shocky obedience didn't extend that far because he simply remained standing in the chest-deep, pinkish water. Allen debated with himself about the likelihood that Kanda would suddenly become biddable once more, decided that it would be more likely that a meteor in the shape of a donut would fall from the sky and strike Mount Rushmore, and kicked off his shoes and slid fully-clothed into the water. As the warm water closed around him and stuck insidious fingers in his clothing, Allen did his best not to imagine the assorted fluids that had contributed to the hazy, reddish cast of the bath. Kanda's automatous shell cracked at the edges and his deep-blue eyes, still not entirely _there_, fixed wanly on his much-smaller bath mate.

"You're alright, easy, I'm not going to hurt you," Allen spewed the clichéd words of comfort as he reached one soap-filled hand in Kanda's direction, fully aware that the one in danger was _him_. A wild light abruptly flared to violent life in the hazy depths of his companion's eyes and Kanda flinched away. The cursed teen knew that the other man, already so abused and battered, was rapidly reaching the end of his tether and moved more quickly. The sudsy hand descended gently onto the swordsman's shoulder.

"Take it easy, we're almost done," Allen murmured, pointedly ignoring the minute trembling of the muscles under his fingers and squelching the little voice screaming "_certain death, certain death, certain death!"_ in his mind. The soap in his hand glided down Kanda's side to his thigh and the pale boy started to wash the other's long, powerful legs. It took nearly ten minutes; the swords master kept jerking away—never quite actually fleeing, but still voicing his discomfort in a very physical manner. Allen was just stunned that Kanda trusted him enough to suffer his touch so soon after his ordeal, or even ever. True, the parasite-bearer would be favoring his left leg in the morning—morning being some unspecified point in the future—due to the damage sustained from one of Kanda's more violent withdrawals that left a heel-shaped bruise blooming on the pale flesh of Allen's thigh. Still, the process was rather easier that Allen had expected—until he was done with the other man's legs.

"Kanda?" Allen queried cautiously. He wasn't sure how well the other man would take what he was about to do. "The worst of the blood and stuff is, well, I need to get it off of you and you don't seem to be particularly interested in doing it for yourself, so…please don't kill me." And before he could lose his nerve, the exorcist ran his soapy, red-skinned hand over the gentle curve of Kanda's backside and used his fingertips to wash away the gore that stained the Japanese man's anus, blushing furiously all the while with his eyes screwed tightly shut—which was why he never saw the vicious left hook hurtling 

toward his face. He only felt the stinging pain and saw the violet and turquoise stars burst behind his eyes as the swordsman's fist collided with his temple with the force of a freight train.

Water sloshed everywhere as Allen fell back, coming up split-seconds later windmilling his arms and spluttering. Kanda's hands clamped over his nose and mouth, driving his head back under the pink surface. _That was a bad idea, Allen_, observed Inner Allen from his relatively safe perch in a far corner of his mind. _You think?_ Allen raged back, panicked and terrified and, God help him, drowning. The cursed exorcist knew that he could escape, could feel the outpouring rush of energy that heralded Crown Clown's activation, could see the marble bath glow vividly with pale light, and he almost lashed out with Crown Belt. Almost. Just before the long, white ribbons of Innocence could completely materialize, the other exorcist fell away. The white-haired teen broke the glittering surface gasping and heaving for air, his lungs burning from the mixture of oxygen starvation of water, suppressing the manifestation of his Innocence.

Long minutes dragged by as Allen was wracked with paroxysms of coughing and dry heaves as his body struggled to maintain a homeostasis that did not involve copious amounts of fluid filling the lungs. When he was at last able to straighten, he set his pale grey eyes to searching for the unpredictable Japanese exorcist. It didn't take long to locate Kanda, who was as far away as he could possibly be in the bath, his head down and his eyes hidden by the soaking mat of his bangs.

"Kanda?" Allen rasped, rubbing at his chest though the sodden cotton shirt that clung determinedly to it. The black-tressed sword bearer muttered a short phrase that was utterly swallowed up in the sound of the storm still raging above then crossed his arms over his chest and started rocking himself, casting little wavelets in all directions.

"Kanda?" the parasite-bearer repeated worriedly, edging closer. The elder exorcist's words became discernable and took shape in Allen's mind.

"'m sorry, 's my fault, 'm sorry." The swordsman repeated it like a mantra and once more his eyes took on the dead, flat look that Allen had first seen when Kanda was still tethered to his bed.

"No, no, no, no," Allen half-sobbed, closing the distance between them to swiftly clasp Kanda's hands in his own after pulling the damaged appendages away from Kanda's chest. "Listen to me. _Listen!_ It wasn't your fault. It _wasn't your fault!_" And the two of them stood there, leaning close like two old, decrepit buildings about to collapse into each other for support and yet never quite touching. The water grew cold unnoticed, until Kanda's hyper-emotional trembling gave way to the shivering of a man trying desperately to regain body heat. Allen cut off his litany and lurched from the tub, water sluicing down from his clothing, and pulled a thick stack of fluffy towels over with one water-wrinkled hand.

A look of quiet sadness settled in on the young exorcist's face. Kanda hadn't moved beyond increasing the frequency and magnitude of his quaking, so Allen hoisted him out of the bath. Kanda crumpled in on himself, a marionette with the strings cut away. The hateful apologetic words poured from Kanda's lips in an immutable tide even now, and Allen could feel potent rage bubble up in his heart while he toweled Kanda dry.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The words rang in the pale teen's ears, incensing him. Hs teeth ground together.

"It's my fault. It's my fault."

Allen had never wanted to kill someone more than at that moment when all he could think of was how nice it would be to impale the shadowy figure that had invaded Kanda's room and violated him mind, body, and spirit. He could practically smell the rich, acrid mix of blood, urine and bowel that would rise in a thick miasma like gases from a swamp when he gutted Mr. Harrison with the deadly, hooked claws of his Innocence hand. Still, he conceded to himself, it would be just as nice to watch the vivid red arterial blood come pulsing out of the severed stump of the old man's neck. Crown Clown's sword form could do that, too.

"I'm sorry, it's my fault."

Something inside Allen snapped. "Shut up! Shut up!" he screamed hysterically. "It's not your goddamn fault, so just shut up!" Kanda's mutterings faded into silence and the delicate-seeming boy scooped up his older companion, cradling the crazed bundle in his arms while he stormed from the bathroom. Kanda was dumped more-or-less unceremoniously onto the huge bed given to Allen by their host.

"Nobody chooses to be raped, Kanda. You don't have to be sorry. In fact, you can be angry. Furious. I am." Allen punctuated his words by dragging clothing from his suitcase at random, throwing articles of it this way and that haphazardly. He seemingly found what he was looking for because he slammed his suitcase-lid down with rather more force than was strictly necessary. A lone brass screw leapt from its place to roll across the floor. "Here," he added, throwing a small pile of clothing at Kanda. It collided with the Japanese man's face with a muffled _flump_ before dropping into the man's lap. He made no attempt to pull the clothes on, however.

Allen turned back to face the swordsman, another angry exclamation ready to spill forth from his lips, only to deflate at the sight of the other exorcist's helplessness. He blew out a sigh and moved to the side of the bed.

"Hold out your wrists," the pale teen commanded gently and was rewarded by the presentation of two wound-barred wrists that, having not scabbed and clotted properly given their long bath, still dripped serum and blood. Allen opened his First-Aid kit and extracted a salve that, after squinting at the instructions panel industriously, if ineffectually, for some time, he decided likely had antimicrobial properties and, even if it didn't, would likely aid Kanda's healing and set about smearing the thick, white paste onto the wide abrasions. Kanda was silent, though Allen knew that, whatever the salve was, it must have stung like no other. Some part of the cursed exorcist was actually relieved: 'stoic' was practically normal-Kanda's middle name. And Allen would be the first to admit that his bandaging wasn't very pretty, either. It resembled the effect you would get if a couple of Egyptian drunks decided to make a mummy out of a third drunken friend, but it was reasonably tight and would keep the salve from getting everywhere. The white haired teen salved and bandaged the sword-wielder's ankles and the bottom of his left foot, too, and did a slightly better job. He didn't have enough gauze left to wrap the shallow slices on Kanda's chest, belly, and thighs, so the white-haired boy just daubed on what he felt was the appropriate amount of salve and left it.

The parasite-bearer's next move was to chew his bottom lip in thought. The thought didn't take too long to discard, so the plump lip escaped death-by-maceration and the lip's owner handily avoided his own destruction—Allen had concluded that, as evidenced by the recalcitrant swordsman's response in the 

bath, trying to salve the worst of the torn parts was out of the question. The bruises as well would have to be left unattended.

Once the basic medical supplies were restored to their place in the cool, impersonal, cross-marked box and the box was shoved to the floor, Allen began the arduous task of dressing the unhelpful and withdrawn exorcist. The loose shirt—the largest one Allen owned—was easy enough given that it was a button-up, but the pale-blue, checkered boxers and the darker blue, striped night pants—also the largest Allen possessed—were a little more difficult. He brushed white hair out of his eyes with his red-skinned hand and thanked his lucky stars that Kanda had a tiny waist, narrow hips, and basically no ass to speak of, else the clothes would never have fit.

At roughly the same time, the cursed boy noticed that he was dripping on the floor and had already left quite a large puddle. It was cold, too. The broken suitcase was revisited, another pair of nightclothes selected, and, after a quick glance at the glazed swordsman and a vague reassurance, Allen ducked into the bathroom to strip, dry, and dress in an incredibly short period of time. Kanda hadn't moved at all when Allen returned, rubbing vigorously at his snowy mane with a towel, so Allen took the liberty of easing him down on the bed and tucked him in like a child.

"I'm going to sleep on the floor right over here," he spoke gently to Kanda, pulling a pillow and spare blanket off the bed. One of Kanda's calloused hands shot out and got a tight grip on Allen's wrist in a movement that was starting to become familiar to the white-haired teen.

"Stay."

At any other time, Kanda would have made the word sound like an arrogant command, but as it was now, the single syllable sounded hurt and lost and frightened. Allen turned back.

"I'll be right here on the floor—"

Kanda shook his head and hid his face behind his bangs, a slight motion he used to only make when he was trying to hide just how angry he was. Allen's resistance folded and the parasite-bearer found himself crawling under the covers on the opposite side of the bed. Kanda rolled to face him, close enough for the pale teen to smell the floral scent left in the Japanese man's hair, but not touching except for the hand that Kanda twisted in the fabric covering Allen's chest.

"Kanda, why—?"

"I know you are Bean Sprout, so I don't have to kill you," came the murmured response. And as Allen pondered that distinctly cryptic remark, Kanda's breathing slowed into the steady pattern of deep sleep. The floral scent was nearly overpowering. Timcampy fluttered up to rest on the pillow next to Kanda's head.

"I don't get it, Tim," Allen yawned as he gave up trying to decipher Kanda's words, his eyes already dropping shut in slumber. Timcampy remained on watch; intricate clockwork had no need for sleep.

Next to the bed, the minute hand of the clock on the nightstand shifted with a soft _tock_. '6:14' the clock read, already ticking away determinedly at the next minute. 6:14.

* * *

Author's note: Confused? Questions? Good. Theoretically, I'll explain everything before the end. I'll try to make some of the explanations obvious.

As a side note, I find rape an incredibly serious topic, so if you think I dealt with it too lightly, feel free to PM me or review with your opinion.

Remember, all the weird things will make sense in the end. And I don't hate Kanda.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: One Foot in the Grave

* * *

"_I know you are Bean Sprout, so I don't have to kill you," came the murmured response. And as Allen pondered that distinctly cryptic remark, Kanda's breathing slowed into the steady pattern of deep sleep. The floral scent was nearly overpowering. Timcampy fluttered up to rest on the pillow next to Kanda's head._

"_I don't get it, Tim," Allen yawned as he gave up trying to decipher Kanda's words, his eyes already dropping shut in slumber. Timcampy remained on watch; intricate clockwork had no need for sleep._

_Next to the bed, the minute hand of the clock on the nightstand shifted with a soft tock. '6:14' the clock read, already ticking away determinedly at the next minute. 6:14._

* * *

Watery sunlight poured in through the large windows on each side of the bed. Allen groaned and rolled over to snuggle deeper into the pillows. Something hard and unyielding jabbed him in the sternum. Pale grey eyes slitted open, then dropped shut.

"Go 'way," he groaned, pushing at the unmoving body next to him. The pale exorcist froze in mid-push and his eyes snapped open. Deep blue stared back, dark and compelling, framed by high-gloss, silky black hair.

"Kyah!" Allen yelped and somersaulted backwards off the bed to land with a loud thud on the floor. "Bugger." The cursed exorcist's mind began whipping down the vital mental checklist that was programmed into all human psyches: _who am I? Where am I? Who the hell is this person next to me? What was I doing last night?_ Fortunately for Allen, the answers to these questions seemed to come to him pretty easily so when the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was memory fell into place, all suddenly became more clear.

"Um," Allen halted through his blush, peeking up over the edge of the bed to look back at Kanda. "Good morning, I suppose."

Kanda's incredibly blue eyes blinked back. "Mornin'," he rumbled, his voice rough from sleep and stress and screaming.

"Er." Poor Allen was rapidly running out of cliché statements to make. _Where is Lavi when you need him most?_ "How did you sleep?"

The raven-tressed exorcist blinked again slowly, then stretched carefully. "Mmn." Allen started fumbling through his understandably limited 'what-to-say-when-you-wake-up-next-to-someone-else' phrase reservoirs, not yet having noticed that he was being more or less ignored by the swordsman, who slid from the bed with somewhat less than his usual feline grace and walked carefully and with a slight limp into the bathroom.

Allen's stream of words dried up at the sight of the small rusty stains that marred the darkly striped pajama pants at the bottom of his buttocks. He curled around himself to brood as the feathery tips of Kanda's hair whisked through the doorway to the bathroom and out of sight.

_How am I supposed to act around him now?_ The pale exorcist fretted, worrying the soft fabric of the sheets between his fingers. _Every time I look at him, all I can see is someone…oh…less than he was somehow. Do I talk about it? Do I ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, and carry on as usual? That's impossible; no one can do that._ Allen tossed back his head, grabbed two fistfuls of snow-white hair, and groaned aloud. He remained in that position for several seconds, lost in his tight, confused world of concern and angst, until the slimy sensation of being watched crawled unpleasantly up his spine. He shot a glance at the doorway to the bath. _Ah._

Kanda stood framed on the threshold, his soft black mane falling in sleep-wrought disarray around him and Mugen, unsheathed and uninvoked, held in one hand. The feeling of being observed slipped away like a fish in the depths of the ocean, cold and unseen.

"I think Samuel left the sheath in the other room," Allen observed more to have something to say than anything else. Kanda accepted the piece of information without any sign of gratitude, as was typical. A stab of pique wedged itself firmly between Allen's ribs, its progress toward his heart broken by the soft rapping of well-trained knuckles on the door to the hall.

"Good afternoon, sirs," Lillian's voice had that uncertain but determinedly cheerful tone that healthcare workers tend to acquire in the presence of aggressive but severely wounded patients. "Your laundry is finished—I brought it up because I figured you would fancy a change—and Mr. Harrison wishes to invite you down to a late lunch."

_Lunch_. The word lodged itself deep in Allen's mind, accompanied by the faint but distinct impression that he was forgetting something important. Realization lit its little candle in his mind—it was too early for light bulbs.

"Wait, lunch?" the white-haired teen inquired, sounding doubtful. "What time is it?"

"A little after two o' clock," came the prompt reply. "May I come in?"

"Nn, oh, yes, of course," Allen gabbled out distractedly. Across the room Kanda's grip on Mugen's hilt tightened imperceptibly as the door opened to admit bronze-haired Lillian in her uniform brown and white. A veritable heap of neatly-folded black and silver leaned dangerously far to the right in her arms and she hastened to deposit it on the thoroughly rumpled bed.

"I brought a few of Mr. Kanda's things from his suitcase, begging you pardon for going through your things, sir," she commented, noting Allen's suspicious look. "Now then, what should I tell Mr. Harrison in regards to lunch?"

Allen's stomach seized control of his mouth and, bypassing his brain as unimportant, the words "we'll be down shortly," tumbled out.

"Very good, sirs," the gentle woman responded with a kind smile before she turned and bustled out, her brown skirt rustling and her starched white apron-strings fluttering behind her.

The younger exorcist chortled happily over his good fortune to have woken just in time for lunch with Mr. Harrison when, suddenly, something rather important came to him. _Oh, God! Mr. Harrison is the one who raped Kanda!_ _We can't go to lunch with him!_ Blind fury rose like a tsunami to break over Allen's head. _That bastard! The sheer gall of it—to rape Kanda and then blithely invite us to eat as though nothing had happened._ A dark, menacing aura settled over the fragile-seeming boy as he cracked his knuckles loudly, his pale, grey eyes picking up glints of scarlet malice. Still shrouded in his mantle of hate, Allen grabbed the first Black Order uniform that came to hand and started to pull it on over his nightclothes. Kanda watched without comment as the idiot teen dragged on a sleek trench-coat style jacket that was much too long for him. Allen, for his part, didn't notice that something was amiss until he turned toward the door and trod heavily on the trailing hem of the coat in the process. The fabric, specially designed and developed by Komui to withstand the incredible wear-and –tear of Black Order field service, snapped taught, stretched, held, and tugged the cursed exorcist down to land in an ungainly sprawl on the floor. Hissing like a cat, Allen shoved himself off of the floor, his already-flaring temper burning even hotter.

"BUGGER!" he shrieked, all semblance of his usually polite, docile self evaporating in the white-hot fires of his fury. He struggled back out of the uniform—there suddenly seemed to be far more clasps and snaps and zips than there had been when he put it on—and stomped over to the bed, this time expending the extra few seconds necessary to sort the stack into two separate piles according to owner.

"Here," he growled, pushing one wad of clothing in Kanda's direction. A lone pair of black socks teetered precariously for a moment before making a bid for freedom and rolling off the top. They bounced on the floor next to Allen's feet.

Allen, meanwhile, was discovering that white-hot rage was hard to keep going. Anything that burned that fiercely had to be constantly stoked, constantly hurtling ahead, because the slightest pause allowed it to fall victim to its own all-consuming nature. On the other hand, the pale teen thought, underneath the inferno was a scorching bed of coals that could be kept dangerously warm for a very, _very_ long time indeed. As such, the delay incurred by his own mistake had stripped away the red, unthinking haze from before Allen's eyes, but did nothing to assuage the underlying fury.

"Here," Allen repeated a little more gently. Kanda took the clothes wordlessly, but made no sign of changing out of his borrowed night clothes into them. The younger exorcist tried a different tack. "Do you need my help?"

Kanda stiffened and gave him a look that, if not quite so cold as his usual stare, could still freeze a lake solid in midsummer. Allen shivered reflexively; sometimes mental and social coldness was pretty good at translating itself into the physical. When the bathroom door slammed shut a few seconds later, even Allen had to admit that Kanda had resumed some truly Kanda-ish behavior.

_It's like he's pretending that it didn't happen_, Allen realized. _And, in a way, if he hasn't changed and nobody around him had changed, nothing _has_ happened. That's certainly twisted enough to be one of Kanda's mental processes, and it has the added bonus of allowing him to avoid any emotional or social fallout from getting raped._ The white-haired young man was a little uneasy with the idea—no one, not even Kanda, could just dismiss their own rape out of hand. _Still, _Allen reasoned,_ maybe it is best if Kanda can just be Kanda for this mission. I'm sure that Mr. Harrison is responsible for the disappearances—normal people don't stash dead Finders in their basements. And, adding to the fact that he raped Kanda, Komui will make sure he gets put away somewhere nasty. At least, until he hangs the bastard or something equally unpleasant happens to him._ A wicked smile of terrible satisfaction stole onto Allen's features. Oh, yes, that old bastard would suffer. For a long, _long_ time.

A soft click alerted the grey-eyed boy to Kanda's emergence from the bathroom. The taller exorcist looked much the same as he always did. So maybe Allen's sharp eyes noted that the sinful white belt was, perhaps for the first time in its existence, actually strapped tight over Kanda's hips, just inches below the striped one that held his uniform coat closed—in other words: where it belonged. And maybe his raven hair wasn't quite as perfectly pulled back as usual and, sure, Mugen was just stuck under the white belt without a sheath and, yes, there was a slight hitch in Kanda's long strides indicating where a normal person would have been limping; the point was that just because Allen could tell didn't mean that anyone else would. And, if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, Allen had only noticed the changes because he had spent a very long time watching Kanda, for different reasons, since he had joined the Order.

The loud "Che!" that broke up the stream of thoughts was certainly something Allen recognized. The younger exorcist nearly jumped out of his skin at the intrusion of that single syllable. His embarrassment melted into irritation and he shot a nasty look at Kanda before taking refuge in the bathroom and closing the door behind himself with a disgruntled "snap."

"Oh, my God, what a mess!" Allen's disgusted tones were half-muffled by the wood between them, but Kanda could still hear every word. The stoic swordsman assumed that his pale compatriot had stumbled upon, probably literally, the trailing heaps of bandages that he had discarded on the floor. Mugen had been more than sufficient to heal the gouges, bruising, and rope burns that Allen had done his best to treat the night before. However, as Kanda eased himself down to sit on the bed, a sharp bolt of pain jolted up his spine to stab little ice picks of agony into his brain. His breath hissed out between his clenched white teeth and the lithe swords master grudgingly acknowledged that, while he wasn't bleeding any more, there was still a rather alarming amount of…_damage_.

Allen reemerged just in time to catch the miniscule flicker of pain that ghosted across Kanda's face.

"Are you alright?" he blurted before his brain hesitantly indicated that concern or recognition of his suffering was probably the last think Kanda wanted because it would mean that someone had seen Kanda as less than his perfectly-controlled, impassive self. And sure enough, the tall, slim man responded only with a slit-eyed, baleful glare. Allen backed away, literally and figuratively, his hands held up before him in a gesture of warding. The atmosphere became awkward and tense as the cursed exorcist searched for a way to question his older companion and Kanda projected a dark, intense aura that just _dared_ the pale teen to make further inquiries into what was a personal matter.

"Sooo," Allen laughed nervously a short while later. "Shall we get lunch?" Kanda shot him an inscrutable look and the white-haired teen was instantly floundering. "You don't have to go! I'll bring you something to eat later, I figured that you wouldn't want to be around Mr. Harrison, but I wasn't really thinking. Look, I'm really sorry—"

Halfway through the avalanche of half-formed apologies and spluttering rambles, Kanda rose with only a slight wince. Allen's jaw clicked shut and the younger teen found himself being towed along in Kanda's wake as the sword wielder walked from the room and down the hall to the top of the staircase, where the black-haired man stopped so fast that Allen, who had been sulking along behind him, collided with his black-and-white clad back.

"Ouch! Why did you stop?" Allen yowled.

"Are we going to the dining room?" Kanda asked at the same time, his voice tight.

"Yes," the pale teen responded simply, not exactly sure what Kanda was driving at. For his part, the rave-haired man just turned and glared, his frosted blue stare making it abundantly clear that he was waiting for _something_. Allen stared back, his own pale grey eyes wide. _What is he doing, just standing there? It's not as if he's never been to the dining room…oh…_

Allen sighed—_so that's what this is about_—and pushed past Kanda to lead the way down the stairs, commenting as he went, "you know, you could just ask for directions or help or even a map." He couldn't help but feel put upon when he felt—he didn't need to look, he just _knew_—the swordsman's stare redouble. They trooped silently through the halls—their boots had not reappeared with their cleaned clothes and so they were forced to shuffle slipper-shod, a far quieter option than their usual thick-soled, hobnailed boots—until Allen turned sharply to the right and pushed open a door to reveal the same long, mahogany table he had dined at the night before. A few steps behind him, Kanda was secretly amazed that the irritating Bean Sprout had actually managed to find the correct door on his first try. He suspected the success was like that of a rat guided through a maze by the smell of food at the end.

Mr. Harrison unfolded himself gracefully from the chair at the head of the table, a welcoming smile crinkling his aged features. The Finder, Samuel, rose as well, his long white robes swishing around him in heavy folds.

"Good afternoon, Allen, Kanda. How good of you to join us for lunch." Mr. Harrison's rich voice had aged like a fine wine—at nearly eighty years of age it was mellow and smooth and captivating. "I heard about your—ah—_experience_ last night and, while they are hardly enough, I would like to offer you my condolences."

Allen stiffened, paled, and started to tremble with suppressed fury, his eyes fixed on Kanda's face. The sword wielder gazed levelly at the old man, then inclined his head a bare fraction of an inch—that was all the acknowledgement the stoic man was willing to give. Shock ripped through Allen like lightning, paralyzing his limbs and fluttering his heart. When he came 'round from the surprise, he couldn't hold back the livid shriek that spewed forth like lave from some turbulent volcano.

"You _bastard_! You condolences? Yeah, because that's going to—"

"Allen!" Samuel gasped, interrupting the pale-haired boy's fledgling rant. "How on earth could you be so rude to our host? This is so unlike you!" And, turning back to Nigel, the Finder began a litany of apology, begging forgiveness for the exorcist's crass behavior. Allen sucked in a deep breath to maximize his volume for the next diatribe, but no sooner than he had parted his lips, Kanda's velvet voice, still rough from ill-treatment, stoppered up his words.

"You are making a scene, Bean Sprout."

Allen deflated in confusion and, in the midst of the soft babble of the Finder's placations and Mr. Harrison's soothing, accepting responses, he sank down into a chair at the corner of the table furthest from Mr. Harrison. Kanda settled himself nearby on the same side of the table—not so close to Allen as to draw comment, but certainly closer to Allen than to the Finder and Mr. Harrison by some small number of seats. The pale teen was slightly mollified by this development, but the strange confusion that had descended upon him refused to be shaken and he passed the lunch in silence, unmindful of Samuel and their host's light conversation on the topic of the topography and natural beauty of the area. So absorbed was he in his own introspective thoughts as he mulled over the odd puzzle presented to him by his companion's behavior that he hardly touched the food available, consuming only five plates of the marinara-drenched pasta, several plates of various salad and almost a gallon of the rich chocolate pudding—a mere appetizer compared to his typical gluttony. He did, however, notice when Kanda, having been served, apparently against his will, his own helping of the creamy dessert, pushed the deep bowl of pudding toward Allen with the back of his spoon, a look of disgust on his face.

"Do you not want you pudding?" Allen asked wonderingly—the idea was totally foreign to him—before remembering who exactly he was talking to. He knew lots of people with sweet-teeth, but Kanda was the only one he had ever net who lodged within himself the antithesis of the sweet-tooth, the ultimate anti-sweet-tooth. For his part, Kanda just gave him one of his best sneers—one that was generally reserved for the nasty things that appeared on the bottoms of shoes after a stroll though a poorly-tended dog park—and even deigned to comment with all his usual nastiness: "I thought that inside a trash heap would be the best place to put it."

The sword wielder's words stung more than Allen would care to admit, but it was a familiar sting that was therefore pleasing and confusing by its very nature of normalcy. Still, no amount of confusion would ever stop him from accepting sweets from Kanda, so the pale, miraculously-slender teen dug into his second round of dessert while pondering his current quandary. _Why can't Kanda just behave like normal people in situations like this? Rant, scream, tremble with fear, accuse, rain hate, cry out his crime, not bloody stay _calm_. This is insane, this is not right; not even Kanda could do this. He would just blow a gasket and start chopping everything in a five mile radius to bits with Mugen. But I saw him! I saw Mr. Harrison there in the window in his room. The door was locked—nobody could get in. So why is Kanda acting like this? Anger and violence are his defense mechanisms. Something is wrong. _And with that revelation lodged firmly in mind, he kicked Kanda under the table so that, when the abused young man looked into his face with murder in his eyes, the pale teen could whisper under his breath: "We need to talk. After everyone goes to bed for the night." Kanda just looked away, his handsome though bruised face expressionless once more.

_See? There—anger when you kicked him, _Inner Allen chimed in. _He's still perfectly capable of responding in his traditional manner, so by all rights Mr. Harrison should be laying in a pool of gore right now. Probably several pools, one for each severed limb._ Allen squelched the voice firmly, deciding to focus instead on the last gelatinous spoonful of pudding that he was chasing around the bottom of his bowl with his spoon. Around him there was a short period of bustling while the servants Lilith and Lane gathered up the cutlery, flatware, and debris of the lunch. The bowl in front of him was whisked away by an industrious Lilith, the small glob of dessert still cowering against one side of the bowl, fatally speared by the edge of the silver spoon. Samuel cleared his throat loudly, distracting their host, who was dabbing decorously at his lips with a linen napkin.

"Was there something you wished to ask, Samuel?" the old man said kindly, his eyes crinkling with his smile.

"Yes, Mr. Harrison," the Finder responded instantly. "You mentioned last night that you might be willing to show us where the disappearances occurred?"

"By all means. Indeed, I already expected this eventuality and the horses and carriage stand ready even now. You will have to forgive the speed at which the carriage travels—it will be much slower than what you are used to, no doubt, but I have grown old and my strength is no longer what it once was." And with that, the elderly gentleman rose to his feet and began to exit the room.

"The Finder's bodies."

Everyone had been following after Mr. Harrison like ducklings after the hen, but they stopped short at Kanda's cryptic comment. Allen was exasperated: yet one more oddity in a long series of oddities. _Honestly, the man should come with his own code book. _Samuel frowned openly at the exorcist while Nigel's brow furrowed with polite puzzlement.

"Excuse me?" the dapper gentleman said after a while when it became apparent that no further explanation was forthcoming. Allen, after his long, arduous experience with Kanda, was one step ahead in the game of guessing Kanda's meanings from the short and oft-mangled sentence fragments that the Japanese exorcist was so prone to employing in the place of an actual conversation with actual complete sentences.

"He wants to know if we are going to see the Finder's bodies before we leave," Allen translated grudgingly, still angry with the old man.

"By all means, if that is agreeable to the three of you," Mr. Harrison replied.

Samuel and Allen took one look at the stormy expression on Kanda's face and decided unanimously that yes, it would be agreeable to them, if only to spare them substantial unpleasantness at a slightly later date.

"Well then, since we are all agreed," Nigel commented, "we will have to go out to the carriage anyway. It is some distance to the crypts; my forefathers felt that it would be best for all concerned if the dead were not interfering with the daily needs of those still living."

"I can imagine that it would be problematic for them to be buried in the area of the vegetable garden," Samuel agreed whole-heartedly with the sentiment of the previous generations of Harrisons.

"It would indeed," rejoined the old host as he ushered them out the same door by which the Black Order trio had entered the mansion on that first night. By the stables waited a gleamingly black carriage drawn by two well-matched bay mares. The servant Lane was already seated on the box, reins in hand and the long crop dangling limp above his head. The springs creaked quietly as the four stepped up into the plushly-upholstered interior one after another and plumped themselves down on the seats. Lane had since then sprung down from his seat and he closed the door behind them with a definite click. Mr. Harrison opened the windows on each side of the carriage swiftly, drawing back the velvet curtains and tying them out of the way with their silken cords. The manservant waited patiently until the elderly gent—clearly quite used to doing things in his own time and with his own steady pace—was quite done before he spoke.

"Where would you like to go today, sir? I believe the village is holding some sort of festival today which you may find of some interest." Lane's voice and tone were plain but strong. Mr. Harrison's own tones sounded, for the first time, as if they reflected his age in truth as he gave directions to his loyal servant.

"Thank you, Lane, but I am afraid that I have business of a more pressing and somber sort to pursue before I indulge in and great merry-making. My road today will be to the crypts and then, perhaps, depending on the state and desires of these three gentlemen, we will go down to the market road where the villagers disappeared."

Lane crossed himself quickly and sighed. "As you wish, but I don't thinks that there will be any good to be found in being tangled up in this mess."

"Perhaps not," conceded Nigel, "but I am afraid that by our very location we have become involved whether we would wish it or not."

The manservant just nodded and, after a small shift of the carriage as he remounted the box, the carriage trundled forward.

None of the four passengers seemed inclined to make small talk on the way to such a grim destination and as such simply fell into their routine behaviors when faced with some dull and unpleasant boredom. Samuel produced a small notebook and began scribbling in it with such haste and intensity that it was a wonder that the wood of his pencil did not catch fire and turn his pile of papers into a merrily-crackling conflagration. Mr. Harrison withdrew an oddly-formed rosary from an inside pocket of his jacket and began counting off the beads, his lips moving silently all the while. Allen noted absently that there was no cross on the rosary—if truly it was one at all—but instead a naggingly, hauntingly familiar glyph, before turning his gaze out the window in order to stare out into the cloudy, misty afternoon. They were passing through the same pine forest they had traversed on their way to the mansion and the foggy air was condensing in pearlescent beads on the ends of the deep-green needles then dropping in crystalline perfection to the deeply mulch-covered floor below. The carriage wheels made scarcely any sound on the thick carpeting and really the only accompaniment to their passage was the jingle of harness and the occasional snort of one of the horses. Kanda appeared to be similarly occupied, though his outward stare did not reflect his actual state of meditation.

Five, then ten minutes passed, the time stretching out peaceably into fifteen minutes. A tall, cold square building slipped into view through the mist. It took very little additional time for the four to draw up beside the chill stone façade. Lane reined the horses to a standstill and opened the carriage door to offer his assistance to any and all who any who may so require it. Once they were all afoot, Lane leapt up once more to his customary position and crossed himself again.

"Begging you pardon, sir," said he, "I'm going to drive the horses back down the path a bit, on account of their not liking this place any more that I do."

"Very well," Mr. Harrison allowed. "Do come back every half-hour so that we need not stand about in the fog and damp for a needlessly long time."

Lane nodded, touched his fingers to his forelock, and carefully wheeled the mares 'round and set off back the way they had come only moments earlier.

"Well then, this way, please," the old man sighed, still very much appearing as a wise and world-weary sovereign when confronted with the stubborn superstitions of his less learned subjects. Allen, however, understood perfectly the disquiet that Lane had felt at the thought of entering the crypt: a sort of ageless foreboding hung over the marble-and-granite monument to Nigel's predecessors, a somber gloom that acknowledged and humbled them in their living presence and seemed resigned to wait patiently for one, ten, one hundred years secure in the cold knowledge that all things must die and enter into its province. The white-haired boy held no illusions that they were trespassers here in a realm over which no mortal man may lay claim, though he might own the land upon which the remembrances of the dead stood and indeed may have wrought it out of the materials of the earth with his very own hands. As the heavy, solemn weight of absolute certainty in the ending of all things pressed down upon them, Allen felt small and young. He glanced out from under the snow-white fringe that fell over his eyes from his downturned head at the other three members of the party.

Nigel, who paced forward to unlock the tall iron gate that stood guard before the heavy wooden door of the mausoleum, looked bent and shrunken—an old man who, while still clinging tenaciously to the last threads of life, was bowed and worn down by time and care until only the essential spirit remained to drive the withered husk of mortal casing, all youth and its vigor long since spent. A chill shivered over Allen's skin when Mr. Harrison, in whom he had only now perceived the true ravages of age, opened and passed through the dark, age-stained doorway: a certain smugness hung in the air—the monument to ending, almost sentient with its understanding of life, knew that it would receive this man, the latest of its familial horde, soon, for time was rapidly consuming the vital spirit and the spool of his life was swiftly running bare. Mr. Harrison though, his hair—as white as Allen's own—glowing luminously in the contrasting dark of the first room of the crypt, stood defiant in the face of the end of his days: an old oak gnarled and wracked by passing storms but not yet ready to let the rot of years spread through its dense heart or to draw up its mighty roots and fall, even while waiting for this winter or the next to finally strip away all choice and strike it down with a single frost-rimmed blast.

Samuel followed closest behind Nigel, his pale robes drawn tight around his body to ward of the unnatural chill of the place. Wrapped as he was in yards of pale fabric, the Finder appeared a spectral figure, some ghost wading through the curling mists with a disembodied head, crowned with a messy spill of chocolate hair, floating above. Samuel's face—well-made, if a little plain—was drawn and pinched by worry and suddenly Allen could see him as he appeared to the ancient crypt: a man of middle years, currently passing into the long twilight of his life, who, just now looking forward out of the bright and irrepressible optimism of youth—at which age death is only a distant figure on the horizon easily ignored and dismissed, has caught sight of that same specter and realized that none of the infinite array of paths stretching out before him may lead him away, for that same black shape waited eternally at the end of each of them, everywhere and nowhere all at once. The brown-haired man hesitated in all his movements, unwilling to be drawn forward through time on his chosen road but unable to resist. Fear of the greatest unknown flickered on the edges of his expression, yet he, too, entered the crypt, his shoulders hunched as though to protect the fragile column of his neck from the cold kiss of the reaper's blade, comforted only by the long years before him still unspent.

Allen paused undecided for so long on the threshold of the mausoleum that Kanda just behind him grew impatient and pushed past, striding into the marble chamber with his head held high. Allen could not see the twisted black tattoo that marked Kanda's chest and shoulder, sending out creeping tendrils up his neck and down his arm and back, but he had heard the hurried conversations between worried Komui and snappish Kanda and he knew that the sword-wielder's life was ending, perhaps even more quickly than Mr. Harrison's, sustained only by this long by the obscure curse that allowed him to take a death-blow and still continue fighting, death coming instead to one of the shell-pink petals of the glass-cased lotus in Kanda's room. The pale-eyed teen had seen the flower that measured out the Japanese man's life and counted off his deaths, petal by petal, until the day it would wither and Kanda would fade away with the last delicate flush of the bloom. And yet Kanda seemed unconcerned by the menace of the tomb; he had already made his peace with death and had come to terms with his own—the crypt could not intimidate him with something he already knew well. Of all of them, he was the least troubled, but still not entirely unaffected: Allen just barely glimpsed the casual brush of the fingers of the swordsman's right hand across his own chest just over his heart. The man's inky tresses gleamed once in the darkness then succumbed to the shadow, giving up their brilliance.

Allen was left alone on the wide, shallow steps leading up and into the mausoleum. He wondered if the others had also perceived the changes that had come over each person as the deep-set door swung open or if those brief flashes of truth were no more than phantasms created by his left eye. He rubbed at that eye irritatedly, delaying the time at which he, too, would allow himself to be swallowed up by the black mouth of the monument. As he stood, he imagined what the others might see in his face, whether his curse glowed black on his skin like the tarnish on silver, a visible corruption and sign of his folly.

"Allen?"

Nigel's soft call jolted the pale-haired young man from his contemplative reverie.

"I'm sorry, I just got distracted," Allen called back, suddenly seized by the urge to remain with the group rather than linger in the eerie, mist-shrouded forest and he scampered up the steps and was within seconds back among the company once more.

"It would be best if we were not separated—such occurrences in such places often have an ill effect on the lone party," Mr. Harrison explained gently, his words further softened by the low volume unconsciously adopted.

"I agree," Samuel averred, a certain heartiness born of fear coloring his words. Kanda just ignored them both and Allen had the suspicion that of all of them Kanda alone was immune to the fear, but not the supernatural aura, of the place.

"The vaults are actually down in the earth below; this entrance is a small chapel used during funerary and memorial services," Nigel said softly, moving toward what appeared to be a deep pit in the floor. The old gentleman held up a lantern in his hand—Allen hadn't even noticed him take it down from the carriage—and in the soft gold light that dripped from it, the four could see descending down into the gloom the beginning of a steep staircase hewn from a dark grey granite.

"Please watch your step," their host continued. "It remains very cold in this valley year-round and we get very little sun even in the summer due to the great height of the mountains on either side, so it may very well be that the steps are icy due to moisture frozen out of the air. The steps go on for some way and it would be a terrible misfortune should one of you fall." So saying, he began to step down into the earth and the little trio from the Black Order followed close behind, the lantern held out before them like a beacon, a reminder of the light and life of the world above held bright in the small, dancing flame. Allen counted the steps at first, but they soon became slick with frost as Mr. Harrison had warned they might and all of his attention was devoted to putting one foot in front of the other without pitching forward into a headlong tumble into the bowels of the earth. Their breath puffed out in ghostly plumes as the air grew colder and more still. It seemed an eternity before the steps leveled out into a slate-flagged landing far below the surface. The ceiling was fairly low—perhaps seven-and-a-half feet above the floor—giving everything a cramped, claustrophobic feel, especially as the light illuminated only a small circle into which all four attempted to crowd unconsciously. The little room, ten feet square at the most, opened up directly ahead into a chamber of indeterminate size, concealed almost entirely by the nearly palpable darkness.

Into this great room stepped Mr. Harrison and he held the lantern aloft as high as the ceiling would allow. Pale fingers of light spread like molten gold, burning away the gloom. Allen gasped and recoiled, his eyes wide. Samuel muttered something incoherent and clutched one hand to his mouth. Kanda "tch"-ed with his usual flippancy and allowed one hand to slide up to rest on Mugen's hilt.

Laid out on slabs of snow-white marble were the bodies of ten men clothed in uniform robes of dusty khaki. Each one was contorted and deformed grotesquely, arms poised in various positions, fingers crooked into claws, eyes staring blankly out of twisted faces pierced by the corpse-black pit of their gaping mouths.

"They remain in the same position as when they were found. Their bodies were oddly stiff—more so at least than can be attributed to rigor mortis alone. The temperature is below freezing here, as you may have noticed, so their bodies have not decomposed very much, if at all," Mr. Harrison intoned, his voice strangely flat.

"Oh, my God," whispered Samuel brokenly. "What happened to them?" Allen found himself wondering the same thing because there did not seem to be any visible wound on any of them; at least, none on any of the ten close enough to see—perhaps six of the ten bodies. No blood stained the Finder's white and the clothing was unchanged from the time it had been issued, its protective folds hiding everything except the faces of the men.

"A doctor was called to determine if he could the cause of death," Nigel, like Samuel, sounded very strained. "He said that he was entirely unsure of the ultimate cause of their condition, but also that it appeared as their hearts had simply stopped. Almost as if they had been…_frightened_ to death."

Samuel gulped so loudly that everyone heard it.

"Please bear in mind that the doctor, like Lane and all of the folk in this area, is highly superstitious and would not perform any full examination. He truly never touched the bodies themselves, so I cannot guess as to the accuracy of his diagnosis," Mr. Harrison tried to assure Samuel. It did little good; Allen could see that Samuel was starting to think that they may be superstitious for some good reason.

"Get a report going to send back to Headquarters, Finder," Kanda growled and his delivery was particularly impressive since his breath wreathed his face in a pale cloud like the smoke from a dragon's jaws, belying the fires that raged within, withheld only by choice. "We need to know what killed them."

With shaking hands, Samuel retrieved from his pocket a small, black, bat-winged golem. The mechanical creature's one red eye blinked open and it sprang aloft to hover over the Finder's left shoulder. Allen suddenly realized that Timcampy wasn't with him—hadn't been with him all day. He wondered momentarily where the usually-loyal golden golem was, but was quickly distracted by the Finder approaching the first twisted corpse to begin his report.

"August 3rd, 4:02 p.m." The golem began to emit a soft whirring sound as it began to record the audio track. "We—Exorcist Allen Walker, Exorcist Kanda Yu, Finder Samuel Marren, and host Mr. Nigel Harrison—are standing in the crypt of the Harrison family." The hovering golem's scarlet eye radiated faint light while it took video feed for transmission to Headquarters, casting a warm glow on the corpses that returned to their cold flesh the pink flush of life. Allen had to curb his imagination, which had no problem with showing him flashes of a future in which the Finder's corpses, restored to terrible life, lurched up off their cold tables to clutch wildly at the four intruders. "The deceased is a male Finder, identification number 079442—" there was a cold rattle as Samuel dropped the ID tag he had lifted from around the corpse's neck. The little metal disk clattered back down onto the marble, anchored by the fine chain that held it to the dead neck. "His limbs are oddly rigid and the body and face are both contorted. The tongue is protruding and is very pale. There do not appear to be any visible wounds. I am going to undress the body now." Samuel rummaged in the folds of his robe, retrieving a pair of heavy shears.

"Would your Headquarters not be better equipped for such an examination?" Mr. Harrison asked, sounding discomfited.

"Yes, but, unfortunately, delays can happen and bodies decompose before a full autopsy can be performed, so all of us Finders learn to do a basic postmortem examination—checking for obvious things and the like—that is relayed to Headquarters via golem. That way, even if the body id damaged or destroyed before it can be returned, Headquarters gets some information at least." By the time he had finished speaking, Samuel had cut through the cold-stiffened fabric of the Finder's garments and peeled them back, exposing dead, pale flesh. There was a tricky moment when the edge of the slice got caught on one twisted arm, but the fabric fell away soon enough. Samuel had to draw several deep, bracing breaths before he could continue without his voice shaking beyond all understanding.

"The statement that there are no visible wounds must be revised." The Finder gulped again, but plowed on with the quiet desperation of those fulfilling a terrible responsibility. "The chest is…crushed…the ribcage looks as though some huge, blunt force was applied. I don't think that there is a single rib that remains unbroken. There's remarkably little bruising of the flesh above and around the ribs, but it seems fairly likely that the internal organs were pierced by bone fragments. That was probably the cause of death. The limbs seem fine: nothing abnormal is apparent." So saying, the Finder bowed his head and drew the fallen Finder's clothes back together again as best as possible given the circumstances, then moved across the hall to the next body, the golem following behind like a faithful hound.

"Male Finder, 043967, odd abrasions like scratches on the face—cheeks and forehead especially—descending on to the neck." The grim litany was punctuated by the disproportionately loud slicing of the shears through fabric. "The torso, oh God, the torso looks like it was shredded using a machete; huge slices have been cut into the shoulders, chest, belly—there are no wounds that would be caused by stabbing force, though. Everything is slashed…" Samuel pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth and ducked his head as he had with the first corpse. "Note that there does not seem to be any blood. The flesh is clean, no bruising is apparent. I don't know what the hell could have done that, but that's the way it is."

Kanda "hnn"-ed in agreement from his position just beside the Finder, from which he had been surveying the dead men as Samuel briefly checked them and recorded footage. While the other three lingered in a state of abject horror at the condition of the bodies, Kanda seemed almost clinically interested. As the Finder struggled to compose himself, the Japanese sword-wielder moved on to a third dead Finder then stood waiting impatiently for Samuel to resume his inspection. It took a couple of moments for the chocolate-eyed Finder to fight down the bile rising in his throat, then he joined the black-haired exorcist.

"Another male Finder, very young, 063392." As Samuel pulled gently on the tag around the young man's neck, the dead Finder's head lolled to one side, rolling away from the stump of the neck. "The subject has been entirely decapitated—"

"It looks as though he was already dead when it happened," Kanda commented, interrupting Samuel's report and pointing to the perfectly smooth cut. "The cut would have to have been made with a powerful stroke with a sharp blade because it is so clean, but the cut is also on a perfectly flat trajectory through the throat—it would have been parallel to the ground if the Finder was standing."

"What does that have to do with him being dead? Being dead tends to preclude standing," Samuel snapped, the uncomfortable situation fraying his nerves and temper. Kanda shot him a withering glance and clutched at the hilt of Mugen thrust through his belt as though he was going to give the brown-haired subordinate a personal demonstration of the difference being alive made to a cut.

"Cuts through the flesh are very rarely on a flat trajectory because blades deflect off of bones and clothing. Also, it is very hard to make a flat cut on someone living because they move and struggle—or even are just knocked sideways by the force of the blow—all of which make angled cuts. Also, people tend to pull down at the end of a cut because they are swinging on an arc with the radius being the arm; the stroke gets weaker toward the end so people pull down to maintain the force of the blow."

Allen goggled. It was probably the most Kanda had said in days—on the entire trip, for sure—and it was on an incredibly gruesome topic. It would figure. _Still normalizing,_ Inner Allen insisted. _He knows bladed weapons better than anything else, so it is a topic of interest that he would be willing to talk about—conveniently delivered in bite-sized pieces so those of us who don't spend our whole lives learning how to wield a sword would understand._

"Why would someone cut the head off a dead body?" Samuel asked aghast. Kanda just "hnn"-ed: his typical response when he either didn't know or didn't care to respond. The Finder continued with his monologue when it became clear that the black-haired exorcist had nothing further to say on the matter. "Once more, there doesn't seem to be any blood. The flesh visible in the severed neck seems oddly pale and the veins and arteries have collapsed. There is no blood, dried or frozen, visible in the exposed veins or surrounding tissue."

Time stretched on oddly as they worked through the rest of the bodies in a long litany of destruction: shattered bones, mangled limbs, torn flesh, pulped organs, and a frightening and eerie lack of blood with which to lubricate the gore. Allen felt ill and faint by the time they reached the last body, the result of a mixture of stress, hunger, exhaustion from the night before, and the gloomy, suppressive aura of the crypt.

"Male Finder, 028357," Samuel's voice droned on, muted by the unfocused nature of the pale teen's attention. "This is the last one of the ten…" Allen's mind drifted again, only to be returned to reality by the sudden cessation of the sound of shears slicing through the sturdy fabric and the dry retch from Samuel followed by a soothing murmur, indistinct and soft, from Nigel. The Finder had his back to the last body, doubled over with both hands on his knees and his head down. Mr. Harrison had one hand on his back, gently patting. Kanda looked slightly pale, but it could easily have been a trick of the light, which was almost nonexistent in the crypt. Curiosity and morbidity piqued, Allen sidled forward until he stood next to Kanda, who had remained by the Finder's side as the examination continued.

"What is it?" the cursed exorcist asked as he approached.

"Che," was the only verbal answer from Kanda, but before Allen could start to feel slighted, he caught sight of what had made the Finder gag. The skin of the corpse's torso had been flayed away and removed in strips, revealing the freakishly bloodless muscle and sinew beneath. The left half of the ribcage didn't seem to fit right and even as he watched, Kanda reached out, seized a rib between two fingers, and lifted. The whole half swung back as if it was on hinges, revealing the body cavity beneath. The slick, thin sheet of the diaphragm divided the brownish coils of intestine from the grey, squishy sponge of the lungs, but where the heart should have been was nothing—or, rather, nothing that should have been there. The empty space had been filled be a fine silver chain with a cross attached. The pure metal glinted up mockingly at them, the small portion of its surface clouded with gore in no way dimming its gleaming radiance.

"Male Finder, 028357," Samuel repeated weakly, his back still toward the corpse. "The chest cavity has been…has been…"

"Broken apart so that the ribs fall back like a door. The heart was removed and replaced with a silver cross," Kanda interrupted, his voice calm and controlled. Samuel turned his head enough to give Kanda a grateful look. Nigel nodded at the Japanese exorcist in acknowledgement of what he had done for his subordinate teammate.

"I think," the elderly gentleman said softly, his rich tones muted and aged by the heavy silence of the crypt. "I think that we have spent enough time down here for today. I believe that we should go."

Allen nodded his agreement vehemently, as did Samuel, who recalled his golem and ordered it to end its recording and send the footage to Headquarters as soon as possible. Kanda hesitated for a moment then canted his head slightly to indicate his amenability to their host's idea.

They were a very subdued group as they walked slowly back up the slick, cold stairs, led on by the single dying star of the lantern Nigel carried. Its light was fading steadily as the lamp oil burned low and claustrophobia clutched at Allen with cold hands as the dimming light made the walls loom larger and close in. The stairs never seemed to end, stretching on forever between two black voids. The cursed teen started to tremble—_the walls aren't falling, I won't be buried alive_—the mantra ran through his mind over and over, but it was not until the white-haired young man stumbled at the top of the stairs and fell to his knees on the cool marble of the entry chamber that his heartbeat began to calm. He pressed his hot, sweat-slicked forehead to the cold stone, unable to shake the feeling that he had escaped from something terrible. Kanda, who had been just behind Allen on the way up, stepped out of the stairwell over Allen's bowed form, planting one heavy, booted foot on Allen's red-skinned cursed hand in the process. The stoic man glanced down as if trying to discover why there was an irregularity in an otherwise perfectly smooth floor and removed his foot, but Allen, who was ready to seize on any emotion that would allow him to escape from the insidious fear that had been all but smothering him, thought he could see the glint of cruel satisfaction in Kanda's eyes when the younger exorcist yelped and snatched his hand back to cradle it against his chest. Allen let out a soft hiss of anger and rose, his terror momentarily forgotten.

Pale, watery sunlight fell through the still-open door and glowed merrily on the white marble. The pastel light was echoed once the four stepped back out of the mausoleum onto the crushed gravel path that led the short way back to the carriage road. The sun had already sunk below the jagged heights of the mountains that surrounded the valley and long, black shadows lay tall on the ground. Grey mist, the same fog that had clouded their journey out that afternoon, rolled in thick drifts. The carriage was nowhere to be seen.

A low, dying groan drew Allen's attention; Mr. Harrison had swung the sturdy oak doors of the mausoleum closed. It boomed hollowly when it bumped back into its frame—the same sort of noise that accompanied the settling of a coffin lid. Even the rust shriek of the wrought-iron gate was less terrible than that dull, cold sound of the oak door. Allen was glad when both gate and door were locked closed and Mr. Harrison pulled a golden pocket-watch from inside his jacket and flipped it open to inspect it critically.

"Lane should be back around with the carriage very shortly," the old man—God, how he seemed to have aged in the last few hours!—said softly, and, sure enough, the sound of hooves and jingling harness became audible in the muffling drifts of mist. Neither the horses nor Lane were calmer when the manservant drew the bay mares to a halt. The mares' ears flicked back and forth and they stamped restlessly. Lane dismounted the box while giving the impression that he would rather do just about anything else.

"You were in there for a long time," the brown-haired servant said not-quite-accusingly, shuffling his feet a bit. "It's nearly a quarter 'til eight."

"Yes," Nigel spoke kindly but firmly. "And we are understandably quite hungry. We would like very much to return to the manor."

Lane appeared to think that a good idea and he sprang to assist everyone into the carriage. No sooner than had the last the quartet settled into their seat and the door had closed, Lane guided the horses around in a tight semi-circle and, with a crack of his long whip, sent them trotting back down the path.

Inside the carriage it was silent. None of the four met each others' eyes or conversed, electing instead to stare unseeingly at a fixed point. Nigel was counting the beads on his rosary with incredible speed, the long loop of beads sliding smoothly through his fingers. Allen found his pale-grey eyes drawn magnetically to the dangling metal glyph where the cross would usually hang. The metal glinted dully in the light from the window—the lamp had been returned long since to the hook on the outside of the carriage—its shine quite unlike that of gold or silver. The sight of it made Allen remember with horrible clarity the grisly cross in the last Finder's chest cavity and Allen wrenched his eyes away.

The return trip took less time than the outward one had and only a few minutes later, Lane had wheeled the horses into the courtyard between eh house and the stables and reined them to a halt. Lilith stood at the back door wiping her hands on her apron, framed in the rich, golden light from inside the house.

"Dinner's done!" she called. "Best you get yourselves in to the dining room while it's still hot."

They took her advice and trooped down the hall to the familiar wood-paneled room. Lilith had insisted that they shed their "filthy boots," so their footsteps were little more than soft thumps that were soon echoed a thousand-fold on the roof when the sky broke open and it began to rain. Dinner, like the carriage ride, was a silent affair and it ended quickly as no one, not even Allen, was truly tempted to linger over the warm cobbler and mulled wine that Lilith had brought out for dessert, no matter how good it was. The matronly woman didn't seem insulted, however, she merely leveled an understanding look on them all then hustled them—including Nigel, her own employer—all back to their rooms, assuring them that a hot bath had been run in each of their rooms.

Kanda followed on Allen's heels through the quiet mansion, stopping just as Allen did just outside the door to the pale-haired exorcist's room. Allen gazed at Kanda blankly.

"Aren't you going to take a bath in your room?" the cursed exorcist asked. A muscle in Kanda's cheek jumped and something—was it fear?—flashed through the sword wielder's deep blue eyes. The white-haired boy noticed it instantly and the distracting burden of all of his thought fell away so that he remembered clearly exactly why Kanda had been in his room in the first place.

"Oh. Um…would it be okay if I used the bath in your room while you used the one in mine?" Allen thought that perhaps he wasn't being quite fair to Kanda, who so obviously didn't want to be left alone for any length of time—he hadn't been separated from the younger exorcist all day except for when he had used the bathroom that morning—but Allen was still irritated a little by Kanda's behavior. _If he spent all day pretending it didn't happen, then he can damn well pretend that everything's fine for a little longer_, Inner Allen snarked. The pale teen relented a little when he saw the fain traces of worry appear in the cobalt fields of Kanda's eyes. "Look," he soothed in his best reasonable tone of voice. "I'll leave Timcampy with you—he's still in the room—and if you need anything, I can still hear you pretty well through the walls. Will that be okay?" Kanda hesitated for so long that Allen thought he was going to refuse his offer, but at last the swordsman let slip a few quiet words.

"Fine. I don't care."

Allen thought the statement was pretty ridiculous given how much he obviously _did_ care, but he let it slide. "I'll be back as soon as I'm done; I still need to talk to you about this morning." At that, Kanda's expression became guarded and wary. The younger exorcist ignored it and opened the door and stepped into the room. Timcampy hurtled out of the shadows in one corner—Lilith had left most of the lights on, so the shadows were relegated to only a few places—and bit Allen's ear firmly as punishment for having been left behind. True to his nature, Allen whined at Tim for a bit about "not being nice" then gave the golden golem orders to stay with Kanda. If a golem could look disgusted Timcampy did, but the loyal golden machine obligingly hovered around Kanda's head before settling disrespectfully on top of the highest point of Kanda's pony-tail. It looked ridiculous, but Allen managed to keep from laughing until he had seen Kanda settled in as much as possible and he had escaped next door to Kanda's room for his own bath.

As Lilith had promised, the bath—twin to the one next door—was already filled with steaming water and Allen stripped hurriedly and threw himself into its warm embrace eagerly. He washed away the day's grime swiftly then swam to the stairs so that he could recline comfortably in the water with no fear of drowning. He was glad that he had made time to be alone—he needed some space to think before he talked to Kanda, especially since Kanda was now wavering between his attempt at normalcy—as though nothing had occurred—and a rawer, less-guarded Kanda Yu, one that had been hurt and was still curiously sensitive, seeking comfort and assurance.

_I wonder why he didn't seem at all bothered by being around Mr. Harrison all day. I would have thought that we would be adding another corpse to the crypt given that Kanda's usual response to anything out of the ordinary is violence or the threat of violence. It just doesn't make sense. Even if he was trying to act as if nothing had happened, he had the perfect opportunity to get his revenge while we were down in the crypt: we were alone and neither I nor Samuel was in any condition to stop him. Other than Nigel, there's only Lane and Lilith, so it's not like there would be a huge number of people who would notice immediately that he was gone, especially given that Kanda would probably notice them, too, and kill them as well to cover his tracks._

Allen shifted lower on the steps so that he could submerge his ears. He blew a few bubbles reflectively.

_It's not like the Black Order is going to announce to the world that Kanda killed a whole household for revenge—that would only hurt the organization and, ultimately, the world itself. Sure Kanda might get punished, but what honestly can the Black Order do to him? Send him on more missions as punishment? He hates being at Headquarters, so that's no punishment. Confine him to Headquarters? He'd make everyone so miserable with his foul attitude that he'd reverse the punishment onto everyone else. If he is acting normally, than his normal action would be to seek revenge against the party that wronged him, which would be Mr. Harrison, so either Kanda is completely ignoring the fact that he was raped and suppressing his most basic instincts—which seems unlikely given how much he would normally go for revenge—or Mr. Harrison wasn't the one who raped him. But that's impossible: I saw him in Kanda's room that night and no one entered the room after me that I didn't know about. This doesn't make any sense._

Allen could feel himself falling asleep, so he half-crawled up the stairs so that he could lay his torso on the cool marble tile around the bath with his legs trailing in the water.

_I just don't understand. Maybe he only _looked_ like Mr. Harrison? But only Tyki and Lulubell transformed like that, and they're both dead. I don't think an akuma could do it, and why would an akuma want to do that to Kanda anyway? And what about those bodies?_

Allen yawned. The bathroom was well-heated by the warmth and steam of the bath and he was emotionally exhausted. His eyelids drooped.

_Damn_, he thought mildly. _I'm going to fall asleep. Good thing I left Tim with Kanda so he can call me when he decides I've taken too long._ His eyelids slid shut over his pale-grey eyes and Allen fell asleep almost instantly sprawled out on the bathroom tiles, warm and tired.

A while later, the door of Allen's room clicked shut—it had been left open so that Timcampy could go between the two rooms as necessary. Kanda was sitting cross-legged on the bed with Mugen across his knees, his hair still damp from the bath and falling unbound over his shoulders while he polished the Innocence blade with a soft cloth. The swordsman's grip tightened on Mugen's hilt and he glanced toward the door then relaxed.

"You took forever, Bean Sprout," he snarled at the white-haired boy who had just snuck in with a sheepish look on his face. "I was just about to send that stupid golem to get you."

"What did you want to talk about?" Kanda continued gruffly, sheathing Mugen then leaning the Innocence blade up against the nightstand with a quiet reverence while the pale young man crossed to room so that he could sit down on the bed next to Kanda.

"Couldn't it wait until you got dressed?" the Japanese exorcist added in disgust when he noticed that Allen had returned dripping wet and wrapped in his towel. The younger man just grinned contritely at him, something odd lying just below his expression.

"No."

Allen's voice was odd, Kanda noticed then, as he opened his mouth to let loose a scathing retort, Allen shoved a soft wad of fabric into his mouth, nearly choking him, just as his arm transformed into that familiar, scaly white claw and pinned the swordsman to the bed.

Kanda's deep blue eyes widened first with shock, then terror, but he was so startled by this development that he couldn't move, couldn't struggle, couldn't speak. At least, not until the white-haired boy used his other hand to tear away the pajamas Kanda had dressed in after his bath and allowed his own towel to slide away, revealing an impressive erection.

"You know, Kanda," the pale boy commented in that same odd voice. "You really ought to be more careful." He smiled dazzlingly as he said this then thrush roughly into the sword wielder's unprepared and un-aroused body with no warning. Kanda's eyes rolled back and his back arched off the bed in agony, his arms and chest constrained still by the huge white claws. Blood spilled from his ripped anus to splatter on the sheets below. The white-haired young man smiled wider and started thrusting, and Kanda began screaming in earnest, even the loudest of his howls smothered into near-nonexistence by the fabric in his mouth.

"Shh, shh, Kanda," the grey-eyed teen whispered into Kanda's ear, his hips still moving against Kanda's own. "It's just Bean Sprout, right?"

Deep inside Kanda something broke and tears, hot and stinging, rolled down his cheeks.

"Don't cry, Kanda, it's okay," the younger exorcist breathed against the Japanese exorcist's skin. "Don't cry, okay?"

Kanda didn't hear him; he was already gone, locked away in some corner of his mind, trapped in a whirlwind of razors—agony, fear, and betrayal. The tears kept flowing, bright and clear.

* * *

Authors Note: Well, that was a depressing post after such a long absence. Thank you for reading if you managed to make it this far. As it is, it is after midnight and I have classes tomorrow (yay, college) so this little note will be very short. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly assure you, my readers, that this story will be completed. Some of you may have given up hope by now, but do not count me out just yet.

Review or send me a message if you want to talk about something that came up in the story.

Thanks again for reading, I appreciate it.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Images in the Mirror

* * *

_Deep inside Kanda something broke and tears, hot and stinging, rolled down his cheeks._

"_Don't cry, Kanda, it's okay," the younger exorcist breathed against the swordsman's skin. "Don't cry, okay?"_

_Kanda didn't hear him—he was already gone, locked away in some corner of his mind, trapped in a whirlwind of razors—agony, betrayal, and fear. The tears kept flowing, bright and clear._

* * *

Morning came slowly. The darkness lightened by minute degrees, the morning sun blocked out of the valley by its mountainous belt and its pale, watery rays smothered by the dark rain clouds. Rain was drizzling down in a miserable fugue and the water collected on the slate roofs, overflowing the gutters to splash down in dreary curtains on the flowerbeds below. In the strange, aqueous half-light, Allen drifted out of sleep sluggishly, lulled by the hypnotic noise of the rain and unwilling to move. His limbs felt heavy and cumbersome and his muscles were protesting their having been forced into unfamiliar activity the night before. He stretched and several of his vertebrae popped loudly. With the soft noise of releasing suction, his skin peeled painfully off of cold marble.

"Ouch," Allen muttered, sitting up and rubbing his back where the stinging was worst. His feet were still in the bath water, which had long since grow cold, and the skin on them had the pale, puffy look of drowned things. They dangled in the water, pale, wrinkled, and hairless as stillborn kittens. The white-haired boy winced at the sight and removed them from the bath, casting about for something to dry them with, something to hide them from view. A neatly-folded towel laying some way away caught his eye, and he pulled it over to the edge of the bath. Goosebumps prickled over every inch of his lightly-tanned skin: it was cold now that the warm water of the bath was no longer heating the air and he had not yet dressed after his ablutions the night before.

"Shit," Allen sighed as he stood. Being around Lavi had expanded his vocabulary, but it was still open to debate whether this had been a welcome development. His waterlogged feet were tender and painful to walk on, something the white-haired boy soon discovered as he took a few halting steps toward the bedroom. He grumbled and finished drying his feet, taking care not to press too firmly on the swollen flesh. He shivered and wrapped the towel firmly around himself. The huge bath towel swamped his slender frame, swathing him in soft cotton from neck to knees. Feeling a little better—a little warmer—Allen, ever the optimist, glanced around, hoping for a convenient set of clean clothing to present itself. No such luck. The pale teen sighed again and kicked lightly at the pile of dirty clothes he had abandoned in a heap the night before. The material quivered and toppled over in a spill of black and silver. He toyed briefly with the idea of wearing them again, but the image of silent rows of mutilated corpses rose in his mind. A shiver of revulsion raced down his spine. No, he would not wear that particular uniform again, not until it had been cleaned—and perhaps not even then. Something about the lingering smell of frozen flesh on the clothing made his stomach churn. No, this uniform would likely have to simply be incinerated.

The grey-eyed boy paused, staring intently at the heap of fabric. The queer sensation of having forgotten something of great import had grown strong enough to command his attention and he found himself searching through his memories for the source of the nagging feeling. It was like stumbling blindfolded through a crowded, cobweb-choked storage room: he was unsure of what he was searching for—relying on being able to recognize whatever it was when it appeared—but everything he examined brought up hundreds of related but irrelevant memories, all of which were shrouded in a confusing haze of half-recalled emotions.

_Was I supposed to be something…useful? Something related to the mission, maybe? _Allen figured that the answer to his pondering was likely an unequivocal yes given how much Komui had lectured everyone about the efficiency of the teams and how they needed to stay focused at all times. Still, something about that thought didn't seem quite right and so he stood, brow furrowed, and scowled at his dirty clothing as though they might be coerced into yielding up the answer he was looking for. To complicate matters, the word 'mission' had brought up an enormous pile of mental baggage, a large part of which was associated with Kanda. Allen could tell because the memories in this mind, perhaps responding to his subconscious murmurs of 'baggage, baggage,' had assumed the form of suitcases of assorted sizes and shapes. 'Kanda baggage' in his mind was black and silver with a single pale-pink lotus blooming somewhere on its surface. Bags relating to Kanda also were slightly odd in shape; not quite enough to create instability in the heaping mounds of luggage, but certainly enough that the eye caught the differences and recognized the slight wrongness of it. Allen sighed; it would figure that even in his own mind, Kanda would find some way to make trouble.

The sensation of forgetfulness changed and intensified whenever Allen brushed a 'Kanda bag,' so Allen, who had long since decided to simply run with the metaphor—even if it almost felt like someone else was directing his thoughts as he would certainly have never created such an elaborate world of baggage memories—started opening the Kanda bags in his mind. Jumbled, half-recognized images and emotions tumbled out of each bag in a relentless torrent. Pale grey eyes glazed over as Allen bent all of his cognitive abilities on locating that frustratingly slippery fragment of memory. It seemed as though each time he drew close to something that seemed important, an unknown force would whisk it away to the bottom of a different pile, obstructing his progress. It may, however, have been a benefit to him that he was able to focus so strongly on his search, else he would have no doubt been dismayed be the vast mountains of interlocking, Kanda-related junk that cluttered his psyche. Memories flitted by swiftly, becoming more and more recent, until Allen finally stumbled upon the one he had been looking for.

"Meet Kanda?" he puzzled briefly. Suddenly, everything jarred into crystalline lucidity. "Oh, blast! I was supposed to talk with Kanda last night, wasn't I? He's going to be even more angry than usual with me, too, because I was the one who set it up. Damn!" The white-haired boy flailed about ridiculously in a more thorough search for clothing, but soon gave up when the futility of the gesture sank in. All of his clothing was in his room, and Kanda's had been moved in there as well when the swordsman had requested—demanded, really, in that stubborn way of his—that he not be left alone. Allen felt a pang of shame and guilt that he had failed Kanda in something that had obviously been important to him: whether Allen had meant to or not, he had left Kanda alone for the whole night.

He glanced once more at his dirty clothes, but having already passed harsh judgment on them, he settled on using one of the huge white bath towels. Allen draped himself in it until he could have, with the addition of a beard, passed for an Ancient Greek philosopher. The exorcist ignored the odd sight he made, kilted up his makeshift toga around his knees, and dashed from Kanda's rooms.

Allen collided with the door of his own room, an unstoppable dynamo of embarrassed energy, and skidded into the bedroom.

"Kanda!" he yelled, slipping on the hardwood slightly, not seeing the raven-haired exorcist. His feet still hurt, but he ignored them.

There was an odd sound like a rope being pulled at a furious rate through a rusted metal pulley; the harsh, grinding howl of a tortured cat. The cursed exorcist froze on the spot, peering into the gloom of the room and trying to adjust his eyes to the sudden darkness after his dash down the brightly-lit hall. Something slender and sharp, black and silver, flashed through the air toward him, fast as chain lightning. Just as Allen's mind—already churning with ideas of how to apologize to Kanda for his failure to return last night—registered the motion, a sensation of pressure lanced through his torso. A red cloud bloomed in front of Allen's eyes, every perfect droplet intensely defined and perfectly delineated in his abruptly hyper-acute vision, followed by a sledgehammer of pain that crashed into him with terrible force. The sharp, ferrous tang of blood filled Allen's mouth and the pale teen slid to the floor as his knees buckled underneath him. Shocked into immobility, he stared down at his own chest with sick detachment, taking in the foot or so of cold metal that gleamed up at him in the dull light from the windows. He coughed and a gout of sticky scarlet splattered over the blade, over the hands he had raised to his chest, and over the polished wood of the floor. His towel had already dropped unnoticed to pool around his folded knees, its snow-colored fibers already stained and swollen with crimson blood.

Allen's pale grey eyes began to cloud over and he slumped further, shifting the blade that pierced him against his ribs. His brain, which had been working so rapidly just seconds before, jarred to a standstill. A shrill, bubbling whistle gurgled from the cursed exorcist's chest as the movement widened the hole in his left lung. Pink froth collected at the corners of his mouth and began to spill slowly from his nose. He could feel his heart straining harder with every beat to circulate the life-giving blood through his collapsing veins while it poured away before ever reaching its destination. He was having trouble focusing— what seemed so clear and defined only seconds before was now blurred, and swam dizzyingly, and everything was blurring into an ugly reddish-black—but his gaze trailed blearily up the blade, wandering over the gore-streaked hands that clenched around the hilt and up the heaving chest that was barely covered by a torn coat, to rest on his attacker's face.

Kanda's face—because it _was_ Kanda who stood before him, covered in Allen's blood—was a bestial mask, his eyes blazing and wild, his lips drawn back into a feral, vicious grin as the swordsman savored each splurt of blood, each dying gasp. The black-haired man twisted Mugen sharply and Allen, who had though that he was beyond all pain, found strength enough to scream as the Innocence blade was dragged from the now-gaping hole in his chest, scraping along his ribs and shifting the fragments of his shattered sternum. Kanda hoisted the blade into position for an overhand chop that Allen had seen him execute a thousand times before: it would cleave him in two.

_Ah._ Some small part of Allen's brain—the last cogent bit—sighed to itself. _So this is how I die. I had always wondered_.

A last modicum of survival instinct surfaced in Allen's numbed brain, summoning up the final reserves of the pale-haired exorcist's strength and, just as Mugen began its apocalyptic descent, Crown Clown flared and activated. Mugen's diamond-hard blade ricocheted off the white tendrils of the billowing, wing-like cloak that materialized in midair and the sword rebounded with enough force to deaden even Kanda's strong hands for a moment. The dispassionate silver mask glowed coldly from behind Allen's head.

Allen could feel his Innocence flowing in what little blood he had left, shoring up the collapsing blood vessels, forming thin but impenetrable walls over the punctures, containing and mitigating the damage. It was as close to healing as Crown Clown's metal nature could allow. The fog in his mind cleared away as the unobtrusive presence of his Innocence settled at the back of his conscience, blocking out much of the pain, reducing the agony to bearable levels.

The grey-eyed boy looked up, meeting Kanda's deeply blue eyes. Something flickered around those ocean irises, something strange and hard-edged, but it vanished as soon as it caught Allen's attention, leaving behind no trace of its existence. He saw himself reflected in those eyes, his Innocence glowing brightly, pure white, in the azure mirror of their surface, and pushed himself to his feet. The long black claws of his right hand gouged the surface of the hardwood while he rose, the white-fleshed left hand already stretching out toward the Japanese sword wielder despite the trembling in his elbows and back from the strain of bearing up his own weight. The pale teens lips moved soundlessly as he tried to form a question, though even he wasn't sure what it was. _Why? p_erhaps, or even _what did I do?_

"Don't touch me!" the black-haired young man screamed, the delight that had shone from his eyes at the sight of Allen's pain vanishing and leaving behind fear and despair. Kanda lashed out with Mugen in a reflexive motion, a smooth shoulder-high swing intended to decapitate a man. Allen's black claw responded instantly, almost moving on its own and catching Mugen's two-toned blade in a mesh of long talons. The Innocence blade screeched against the unyielding hand, throwing pale white sparks that plummeted to the floor like dying stars. The other hand, snowy, the color of finest porcelain, reached out and cupped Kanda's chin, holding the swordsman's gaze locked with his own. Fine tendrils of Crown Clown's cloak fluttered around them in a nonexistent wind.

"Don't touch me," Kanda half-sobbed, tugging at his Innocence blade, trying to pull it free.

"What happened, Kanda?" Allen demanded, finally finding his voice and making his tone as low and as gentle as he could and still retain the force of command. The younger exorcist wanted, _needed_, to know why the man he had trusted with his life on so many missions had lashed out at him like this, striking him down. Kanda moaned like a dying animal and attempted to jerk away. The white hand held fast and the claws trapping Mugen tightened.

"What happened, Kanda?" the cursed exorcist repeated firmly, trying to ignore the sizzling pain in his chest that made his arms tremble slightly. Kanda shuddered and struggled and while Allen watched helplessly, a single saline drop welled up in the corner of Kanda's midnight eyes, shining with the light reflected from Allen's Innocence. It slid over on bronzed cheek, caressing the planes of the swordsman's flesh to cling momentarily to the sharp edge of his jaw, where it quivered and trembled before splashing onto the floor. Kanda shivered violently and closed his eyes just before his strong body went limp and he slid bonelessly from Allen's grasp, leaving Mugen dangling from the black talons. From his position on the cold wood planks, Kanda opened his eyes again and stared up at the pale-haired exorcist.

Allen was stunned. Gone was the terrible insane rage that had marred the Japanese man's visage. It was replaced instead by an overwhelming horror and sick revulsion—the greatest display of self-disgust Allen had ever seen. It was some time before the cursed exorcist noticed that the sword master's lips were moving with the broken cadence of fragmented speech.

"Inside…me…it was inside me, I could feel it…so angry and so hungry…it hurt, it _burned_, and it got stronger and stronger, and then it was you, it used you to use me…to use me…" Kanda's shivers grew stronger and more pronounced.

Allen, confused and too weary to stand any longer, knelt in front of Kanda and set Mugen down a short way out of Kanda's reach. Carefully, he reached out with both hands, his Innocence still activated out of necessity, and pulled Kanda into a loose embrace. Kanda swayed forward to rest his forehead in the juncture between Allen's neck and shoulder. The swordsman's soft breaths tickled the sensitive skin there while his black hair tumbled messily over Allen's shoulder to stick in the blood that coated Allen's body. They knelt together like that for some time, like two old pillars who must support each other or fall, Kanda seeming to be comforted by Allen's nearness and Allen too battered and light-headed from blood loss to be able to move or pursue his questioning. Allen could feel Crown Clown pushing back the drowsiness of bloodloss that had settled on him and after a while he felt well enough to try to make sense of the situation. He lifted his head just enough to get a good look at Kanda—and then felt his stomach give an unpleasant lurch. Kanda wore only his long exorcist's coat, which was shredded and tattered, and the remaining fabric did little to hide his body. New bruises and scratches stood out angrily on Kanda's flesh, which was splattered and smeared with blood, both his own and Allen's. Though Allen was sure that the blood that reddened the insides of Kanda's thighs belonged to the swordsman alone. The cursed exorcist groaned, the physical manifestation of his emotional pain.

"Oh, God, oh, God," Allen whispered as something clicked in his brain, a sharp ache blooming in his chest that had nothing to do with the raw wound there. "I'm so sorry, Kanda, I should have stayed, I should have just shared the damn bath, oh, God, I'm so stupid. I'm so sorry Kanda. He came again, didn't he? He…he raped you again?" Kanda said nothing, but burrowed his head more firmly into Allen's shoulder, hiding his face. When Mugen's wielder finally spoke, his voice was tortured and strained.

"It—he—never went away, he never went away. He waited until I was alone, then I wasn't me anymore and you weren't you anymore and he used me. _Used_ me."

"You weren't you anymore? What…?" The cursed exorcist was floundering in the vagaries which, while they obviously meant something to Kanda, made no sense to the younger boy. Kanda shook his head vigorously, his black, tangled mane tumbling messily about his shoulders.

"No,no, you don't understand," Kanda moaned, sounding lost. "He was inside me, inside my head. He could see what I could, hear, taste, smell the same. Only he's stronger and he could make me think or do…_things_…" Kanda's voice dwindled away into nothingness and he ducked his head lower, nearly brushing Allen's chest. His hands remained limp at his sides.

The pieces of Kanda's story began to drop into place and Allen started to guess at what the obviously-shaken swordwielder had meant.

"You were possessed," Allen said wonderingly. "But akuma don't leave souls in the bodies they steal…"

"Do you see any akuma with that eye of yours?" Kanda snarled, jerking his head up to meet Allen's eyes, his mood shifting abruptly and his typical anger snapping out snake-like. The Japanese exorcist shoved Allen back to arm's length and glared. Allen, stunned into compliance, activated the cursed eye. The white of his eye was obscured as red and black swirled to take its place, the gear-like lens rotating into focus. Through the lens, everything that had been perfectly clear—or at least as clear as Crown Clown could make it—was a blurred shadow, smudged with grey-red and greasy black. The cursed exorcist's stare darted around the room, avoiding looking at Kanda, afraid of what he would see. A loud "che!" startled him and his gaze flicked onto the black-haired man kneeling in front of him. His uncovered grey eye widened.

Allen had half-expected, half-dreaded seeing the ghastly crimson haze that signaled possession by one of the Earl's metalloid creations, the chained soul made hideous by suffering. Instead, a pulsing, cold blue light crawled over the hazy form of the Japanese swordsman in fat, plasmic streamers. The tattoo over the sword wielder's heart blazed forth glaringly, its smooth loops and arcs burning bright. Allen realized abruptly that he was seeing Mugen. Sure enough, when he glanced at the Innocence sword to confirm it, it radiated the same eldritch blue luminescence.

"Mugen possessed you?" The white-haired boy leapt to the conclusion in one astonishing bound of faith. Allen couldn't make out Kanda's expression through the swirling miasma his cursed eye was picking up, but the sudden atmosphere of contempt and disgust, both still intermingled with emotional pain, told him clearly that he was spectacularly wrong.

Frustration was beginning to creep up on Allen as well; the heavy azure overlay of Mugen's aura made it extremely difficult to see any other lingering forces and he was tired and he _hurt, _damn it. For a moment, Allen was sure he had seen something glimmering at the edges of the blue aura intrinsic to Kanda's form, but as soon as he tried to focus on it, it slipped away to hide under the cobalt of Mugen's presence, vanishing like water down a drain. The white-haired boy nearly tore his hair out with exasperation.

"Do you see it?" Kanda demanded, his patience also running out. His strong voice was roughened by screaming and stress. "Can you see anything?"

"No, no!" Allen cried out, then regretted his outburst instantly when the sudden inflation of his damaged lungs with the extra volume of air needed to shout made him double over in a paroxysm of coughing that left him spitting up blood onto the floor between his knees and Kanda's. His broken ribs screamed in protest and a few more bubbles of bloody foam dribbled from his nose, only to be impatiently wiped away on the back of Allen's hand. When he had recovered sufficiently, the cursed exorcist continued in a much more subdued manner: "I thought there was something there for a moment, but it disappeared before I could be sure." He lifted the black-banded white hand from Kanda's shoulder to rake it through his pale hair distractedly.

"I can't seem to look at it or search it out without it hiding itself—whatever it is that I am looking for." Allen grumbled.

"I know." Kanda frowned, his aggression spent as suddenly as it had come. The black-maned man sunk down into a weary half-sprawl, supporting himself with his hands on the floor. When he spoke again, the words came tumbling out so quickly that Allen had to strain to catch them all: "I thought that maybe with your eye, but… It's as though he can tell when you're looking for him. He hides himself inside…but, maybe…come with me." The tall Japanese man stood, swaying slightly and slipping a little in the pool of Allen's blood on the floor, which was congealing into a tacky scarlet morass, and stumbled toward the bathroom. He left bloody footprints on the floor. His long black hair swished across his back and across the tops of his buttock. Allen's pale grey eyes followed the trail of his mane, his eyes lingering in horror over the bruises and marred skin and blood that marked the violated flesh and which the battered exorcist coat was not enough to hide. The rents in the black fabric just made the image worse. Kanda noticed Allen's inactivity and paused, turning his head to look over his shoulder at the white-haired boy and revealing bite marks that stood out lividly on his neck.

"Are you…are you alright?" the swordsman asked gruffly, unused to asking such a question. Allen stared back at him blankly from where he still knelt in a puddle of his own blood. Seeing the stoic sword wielder standing there still wearing all of the traces of his recent possession and rape and still asking him, Allen, if he was alright—an action so far removed from Kanda's normal comportment—something inside Allen broke. The pale boy started to laugh, a thin, hysterical laugh that ended in sobs that shook the slender exorcists slight frame. He started to cry and his lungs began to protest the jerky movements of laughter—the sobs turned to racking, wet coughs that sent more blood to splash onto the floor. The new blood was brighter in color than the old—a rich, bright scarlet against the darker carmine of the older fluid. Allen's tears traced pink lines through the blood on his face. Kanda shuddered again and made a half-step in Allen's direction before Allen forestalled him with a few words.

"No, Kanda, I'll be alright, I just…" he couldn't say just what he felt or thought at that moment, so he gave up and somehow got to his feet. The towel, which had been forgotten long ago, was left in a sodden, bloody heap where it had fallen. He felt so tired, so drained. He wanted to laugh again at the absurdity of it all: one man horribly damaged inquiring about another's health when he himself was in no better shape; he himself needing to maintain the invocation of his Innocence in order to keep from bleeding to death when the steady drain of his parasitical Crown Clown was killing him just as surely. Somehow he choked back the crazed laughter, swallowed the bloody saliva that filled his mouth, and dragged himself onto his feet. Allen could feel his legs buckling until Crown Clown's billowing filaments wrapped themselves around his flagging limbs and steadied him. He wanted to sleep, to do _something_, but it was all he _could_ do to limp towards the bathroom in Kanda's wake. Kanda watched him struggle wordlessly.

"Don't leave Mugen behind," he ordered before resuming his slow, measured tread toward the bathroom. Allen over-balanced when he reached for the Innocence blade, nearly collapsing in spite of Crown Clown's efforts, but righted himself by the simple expedient of using Mugen as an impromptu crutch. Weaving and dragging his unresponsive feet, Allen managed to make his way into the cool, marble-tiled bathing room. It was a mark of how terrible he must look, Allen decided, that Kanda didn't rage at him for using Mugen for such a base purpose, but the swordsman seemed both unsurprised and unperturbed. Allen may have been imagining it, but he thought that a brief flash of regret crossed Kanda's face.

Allen didn't understand at first why Kanda had wanted to go into the bath room: he was too tired to think properly and Crown Clown didn't seem to be doing as good a job at blocking out the pain as it had been. Kanda didn't explain himself, he just grabbed Allen's wrist and towed him unresisting around the deep, empty pool and positioned him in front of the enormous mirror that hung over the double sinks at the back of the room. The cursed exorcist hadn't noticed it before; presumably it had been hidden by steam from the bath, which was now not in use. Kanda lowered his head and seemed to be steeling himself for whatever he was about to do, and then stepped in front of Allen and off to one side such that Allen could see past him into the mirror.

"Now look," Kanda instructed the younger boy softly. Allen nodded and once more the metalloid lens rolled into place over his eye, focusing in the more dimly lit bathroom. The world became grey and red and black, except for Mugen, which still crawled over Kanda's flesh in sinuous strands of electric blue. Allen was captivated by its azure tendrils as they looped across Kanda's shoulders and slid down his back. Looking down at the sword he was leaning on, Allen could see the same blue light radiating from the blade and streamers of Mugen's aura creeping up his black arm in defiance of Crown Clown's dazzlingly white glow.

"Look in the mirror," the swordsman directed, diverting Allen's attention from the fascinating interaction between the two pieces of Innocence, whose luminescent filaments had tangled together around his elbow. Allen obediently looked and, at first, the room was identical in the silvered glass, only reversed. Then something shimmered at the edge of Mugen's aura as it coiled around Kanda. The white-haired exorcist frowned and looked more closely and suddenly, like a beast flushed unexpectedly from a thicket, a new aura flared into brilliant display. It flickered in jagged arcs around the sleek curves of Mugen's power, flashing and sparkling. The light was a harsh, garish pink that bordered on red in places and faded to almost white in others, but always the unknown aura sparked and skittered as if it were trying to avoid Allen's gaze.

"Do you see it now?" Kanda's voice was low and intense. "It's still there, inside of me. I can feel Mugen holding it back, but…" The swordsman didn't continue, but he didn't need to; Allen's mind was already supplying the rest of the sentence: but for how long?

"What is it?" Allen asked, still staring at the shocking pink whorls and spikes that slashed through the air around Kanda.

The Japanese man just lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "I can't see it, can't see _him_."

Allen frowned. "I don't see a person, either." Kanda glanced at him askance and the white-haired boy hastened to explain. "There's no one there with you, just some sort of weird pink energy. I can see Mugen, too, as a sort of blue light, but I don't know what it is exactly that I am looking at. It isn't hiding from me anymore, though; I don't think that it can tell that I am watching it unless I look at it directly."

Kanda slumped in on himself, making himself look smaller, and tucked his chin toward his chest. Allen continued to watch the play of colored lights in the looking glass, finally discerning a pattern in which the pink would shoot arms toward Kanda's flesh only to be repulsed again and again by a shielding tendril of Mugen's blue energy. It was pretty, in a disturbing, uncomfortable sort of way, and the cursed exorcist stood transfixed, leaning ever more heavily on Kanda's sword as Crown Clown sapped him of energy.

After some time, Allen broke the silence by settling himself cross-legged on the floor, too weary to stand any longer, and asking Kanda in quiet, tired tones: "You stabbed me. Why?" It was a question that had been bothering him because Kanda's attack had radiated hate and killing intent, an entirely different attitude from the trusting, need-you-here behavior Kanda had shown the night before. The pale teen turned his attention from the mirror to Kanda's face as he asked, noticing in passing that as soon as his focus shifted onto Kanda, the pink lights vanished from sight, hiding again under Mugen's aura.

A spasm of frustration darkened Kanda's neutral expression for a moment before the swordsman resumed his blank poker-face—the one he always wore when he was feeling something particularly strongly and was not inclined to share it—and replied, "When you came in…it was the same as before, when he came. I thought he had come back. He wears your face sometimes and…when he does, I can't really tell."

Comprehension dawned. "So when you said that he was me…?" Allen wondered. Kanda nodded.

"Ah," was all Allen could say for a moment, then he grinned suddenly—he felt no mirth, only great relief that it wasn't him that the swordsman had hated so intensely. "At least you didn't chop my head off like you started to. Crown Clown couldn't fix _that_." The white-haired boy giggled to himself, sliding down to lay on the cold marble tiles.

"I was going to. Then you activated Crown Clown and I knew that it wasn't him; I think that he can only replicate what he has seen before, so he couldn't have mimicked your Innocence like that." For once, the stoic and reserved swordsman seemed to find some solace in talking and Allen, lying sprawled on the floor naked, drenched in his own drying blood, and wrapped in a haze of bone-weary tiredness, was content to let him continue for as long as he liked and simply absorbed the other exorcist's words in silence. Kanda spoke faster and it sounded as though he was trying to explain his attack on his younger companion to himself or to Allen; the white-haired boy couldn't begin to guess which.

"When I stabbed you and you invoked your Innocence, I realized that _he_ had been using me again…He was feeding my anger and making it harder for me to think…if you hadn't caught Mugen, I would have killed you." He sounded almost…remorseful, guilty, ashamed.

Allen managed to gather together his scattered wits long enough to comment in a soft voice that was mushy-sounding from the blood that still pooled in his lungs: "It wasn't your fault, Kanda." It was odd how many times he seemed to be repeating that line to Kanda on this mission. "You said he could control you, manipulate you, make you do things…I don't blame you. It's not your fault."

From his position on the floor, Allen couldn't see Kanda, but he heard the soft rattle of buttons as the sword wielder shivered and the quiet shushing noise the fabric made as he drew the remains of his exorcist's coat closer around his body. There was silence again for a few moments and then Kanda spoke in a gruff near-whisper: "Shut up…Bean Sprout."

Allen craned his neck so that he could see the swordsman. Kanda was looking away, but Allen could still make out, even in the dim bathroom, the blush that stained the Japanese man's cheeks and reddened the tips of his ears. _Kanda, blushing?_ Allen thought idly, starting to fall asleep. _Wonders never cease. Stubborn ass, too proud to say come out and say he's sorry, and then too embarrassed to accept forgiveness gracefully. Typical._ The pale teen relaxed back onto the tiles. They felt warm all of a sudden, and comfortable, and he was just going to take a little nap right here and…

Crown Clown wavered, partially disappearing and flickering like a candle in the wind. Kanda was crouched at Allen's side in an instant and, seeing the cursed teen start to slide into unconsciousness, slapped the younger exorcist across the face. Hard. Allen blinked up at him groggily, a mumbled protest on his lips, and Crown Clown's form solidified and settled.

"Don't go to sleep, idiot!" Kanda snarled. "Do you want to die?" Allen made no response beyond a few garbled murmurs, so Kanda slapped him again. The pale grey eyes focused on the swordsman's face questioningly. Kanda pulled the smaller boy upright, propping him up against his shoulder. Allen's flesh was cold, too cold. Kanda left Allen for long enough to find something to cover the other boy with and returned seconds later with two fluffy white bathrobes. The sword wielder pulled one on quickly over the tattered remnants of his exorcist's cloak and dragged the other onto Allen's too-still form, shoving the limp arms into the sleeves roughly. That done, he shoved Mugen through the belt of his bathrobe, hooking the hilt onto the fabric to that the blade wouldn't cut it away, and hauled Allen up against his chest. The white-haired exorcist's arms dangled over Kanda's shoulder in a parody of an embrace. Allen's head dropped and Crown Clown shivered out of existence again, only to jolt back into view when Kanda shook the teen in his arms.

"Stay _awake_," Kanda hissed at him, wrestling the limp body into a position in which it could be carried. "You need to stay awake and you need to eat—you damn Innocence is killing you. I'm going to take you to the kitchens, but you can't go to sleep."

"Food?" Allen mumbled, sounding vaguely interested.

Kanda didn't bother to answer the younger exorcist, instead making an attempt to rise. Agony shot through him, starting from between his legs and tracing a line of fire up his spine. His muscles, which had been honed and hardened by years of grueling exercise, quivered with pain and failed. The Japanese exorcist sank down onto his knees. Allen's body, slight as it was, was too heavy for him to carry in his current state—the swordsman could barely walk on his own, let alone bear the weight another person of another person. Kanda wanted to scream, to rage, and tears of frustration welled up in his eyes at his own helplessness, but an inner core of pride—the bedrock that had allowed him to carry on for so long—kept him from crying out for help. He bit through his lower lip as he clenched his teeth, at war with himself, needing assistance but unable to ask for it.

In that desperate moment, there was a startled shriek from behind him. Kanda whipped his head around, trying to shift Allen in his arms and draw Mugen from his belt at the same time, failing in both attempts. Lilith's laundry basket hit the ground with a soft wicker thud and tipped over, leaving a trail of clean laundry as it rolled to a halt. Her face was white under her sleek bun and starched cap and she was pressing her hands to her mouth in astonished horror.

"I saw the blood in the bedroom, but, oh, goodness, child, what happened?" She wavered in astonishment, but soon enough her sensible nature won out over her shock and a brisk, matronly side appeared _en force_.

"I'll be right back, I'll get a doctor and send Lane to heat some warming bricks…" She had already turned toward the door when Kanda found his voice.

"No!" The shout echoes in the bathroom and probably could be heard through the whole house. "No," he repeated more quietly. "He needs to eat. Crown Clown, his Innocence, the white thing around him, is devouring his life energy. He must eat or he will die."

Lilith nodded understanding and rethought her plan quickly.

"You're in quite the state too, aren't you? You can't lift him?" she asked swiftly. Kanda nodded and Lilith descended on him in a flurry of skirts, pushing him gently out of the way. Then, with an ease born of years of moving furniture, kneading bread, and lifting anything and everything around the house, she hoisted Allen up into her arms, ignoring the silver-white tendrils of Crown Clown and the blood that was staining her crisp white apron where Allen's hands brushed across it.

"Come along, Mr. Kanda," she ordered as calmly as possible given the situation, then turned and swept out of the room, carefully handling her burden in order to avoid slamming him against the doorframe. Kanda rose from his kneeling position, pushing the sharp stab of pain through his lower back out of his mind. He staggered in Lilith's wake, mentally cursing the weakening of Mugen's healing power that had begun when they had set foot on the grounds of the estate. As it was, the effort of trying to lift Allen had reopened the wounds from the night before, which had barely been covered by a thin layer of new, sensitive skin. The swordsman gritted his teeth, feeling a trickle of blood trace its way between his buttocks and down his left thigh as he limped along.

By the time Kanda managed to get to the door that led from the bathroom to the bedroom , Lilith had already skirted around the pool of blood that had poured from Allen's chest. A sharp stab of guilt assailed him, but he shoved that aside like the pain: Allen had already forgiven him and there would be time later to forgive himself.

Lilith halted for the briefest of moments at the door, half-turning to address the Japanese exorcist. "Can you find the dining room on your own?" Kanda hesitated, trying to remember the way, but his usually-keen memory was failing him, just as his body already had. The maid noticed the pause and sighed sharply.

"Keep up as best you can, then. I would take Mr. Walker here down and then return for you, but it really is best if no one is alone if things like this are happening." Her words were clipped with stress and Kanda could see that only habitual efficiency was keeping her from falling all to pieces. She was trembling with the effort of repressing the terror that was welling up behind her eyes. Lilith moved on with quick steps, pausing only when Kanda lagged too far behind. On one such occasion, Kanda managed to spit out a few words between teeth clenched against the pain.

"We should go to the kitchen, not the dining room," he half-panted, half-growled as he caught up. Lilith started moving again, speaking over her shoulder.

"No," she said. "The dining room is where Master Harrison is. He'll be having breakfast at this time, and Lane can bring food from the kitchen. Mr. Harrison will likely be able to tell you why all of these things are happening, but why, after all these years…?" The fear in Lilith's voice was more pronounced now and her stride had quickened without her noticing. Somehow through the pain of moving, Kanda found enough energy to be angry.

"The old coot knew what was going on from the beginning and he didn't see fit to share it with us?" the sword wielder snarled, enraged by the maid's disclosure.

The maid was on the verge of tears, so she spoke with a choppy, hiccupping rhythm: "It is different from before…it wasn't like this…that's why we thought that maybe…maybe it was the akuma those men were talking about, we don't know much about them, but…" Lilith trailed off, shaking her head. Wisps of chocolate brown hair escaped from her tight bun to frizz around her head in a disheveled wreath.

Apparently Lilith wasn't the only one who saw sense in her decision. Allen stirred slightly in her arms and he managed to rasp out a few faint-sounding words. "Kanda, if Mr. Harrison can tell us what is going on, we don't have time to waste harassing the maid in the hall."

Kanda's ill temper was hardly improved by being reproached by the younger boy and the swordsman's response to the rebuke was to snap at Lilith, "Move. I want to talk to that senile idiot." It would likely have been a more impressive display of wrath if he had been capable of moving with even a fraction of his usual ease. Lilith, however, seemed to understand that fury was Kanda's response to stressful situations and she started off down the hall again at a good clip, her brown skirt and starched white apron swirling around her legs.

Silence, broken only by Allen's occasional mumble and Kanda's short, sharp gasps of pain when he took an injudiciously long step, descended upon the trio as they proceeded down two flights of stairs and through several corridors to a familiar door.

They must have looked terrible when they burst into the same wood-paneled dining room they had been in the night before. Mr. Harrison, who had been eating breakfast at the head of the table, leapt to his feet at the sight of them. The table was jostled by the motion and the delicate crystal goblets laid out for the morning meal toppled slowly and shattered. Orange juice began to seep into the snow-white linen of the tablecloth. Samuel was there, too, and he looked just as horrified as Mr. Harrison, though he made no attempt to rise from his seat

"Oh, God, I had hoped--," the elderly man began, then, seemingly overcome by some great and terrible pang of emotion, sunk back into his seat. He looked old and careworn; fragile.

"Is everything alright?" Lane asked, appearing through the door from the kitchen.

"Lane, bring food, lots of it, right now. Something easy to eat," Lilith ordered the manservant almost before he had gotten out his question. Lane took one look at the bloodied boy in her arms and fled back into the kitchen. There was a tremendous clatter that could only have been caused by the sudden fall of several pots and pans to the floor, then Lane reappeared, laden with platters of hastily-plated food. He set the trays down on the table and made as if to leave again, but Mr. Harrison waved him back, gesturing to an open seat.

Lilith set Allen down in one of the other chairs and set a small plate of soft, warm scones down in front of him.

"Eat," she urged him.

It was a measure of the depth of Allen's exhaustion that he did not at first respond, but the tantalizing smell of the scones managed to rouse him into greater consciousness and the pale exorcist began to eat, slowly at first, then faster and faster until he was practically cramming each mouthful in before he could ever hope to swallow. Each bite was an agony, and Allen was entirely certain that he shouldn't be eating _anything _when there was such an enormous hole in his chest—Komui had once spent an afternoon ranting at him about contaminating his wounds—but it felt _so much _better when Crown Clown began to draw energy from something other than his own vital force. Lilith moved a pot of jam and a crock of cream closer to the gorging teen and added a few more plates of breakfast food—scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, bacon, and biscuits—to the edibles within Allen's reach. Meanwhile, Kanda eased himself down into the chair next to Allen. It hurt to sit, but less than it did to continue standing, so the swordsman just ignored the discomfort that the chair's cushioned seat was causing.

Lilith's gaze swept over to the slumped black-haired man. "You should eat, too," she admonished, and much as Kanda would like to have protested being treated like a child, he hadn't the energy, and he accepted the toast and eggs the matronly maid pressed upon him with ill grace and began to eat in small, quick bites. Satisfied by the two exorcist's compliance, Lilith sat down as well, taking a spot across the table from Allen and Kanda so that she could continue to add to the meal in front of them.

"God, I had hoped that it was over, that it would not happen again," Mr. Harrison groaned. His voice was weary unto death, so soft and broken as to be nearly impossible to make out.

Samuel divided his stare between the two exorcists he had been assigned to serve, who were in worse condition than he had ever seen them before, and the old man who sat bowed with grief. "Do you know why Allen and Kanda are in such a state?" the Finder inquired. Mr. Harrison flinched as if he had been struck.

"Yes, yes," the aged gentleman spoke in pained tones. "I will try to explain, but…oh, you shall have to bear with me, for this is a very long and very old story, and it must be told from the beginning." Here he looked up and surveyed the faces of the others seated at the table. They gazed back at him with an air of trepidation and expectation, clearly waiting for him to continue. Even Allen paused in his ferocious devouring to look at his host. The old man did not seem surprised or alarmed at the sight of Crown Clown glowing around Allen. The Innocence, Kanda noted with relief, had begun to solidify again, and the pale, flickering version of Allen's Crown Clown had been restored to a stronger, more vital radiance.

Mr. Harrison bent his wizened head and fumbled with the flatware in front of him, clearly lost in some dark memory. When he spoke, his voice was cracked with pain and distant, as though he spoke to them across a vast chasm and under the weight of thousands upon thousands of regrets.

"I was a foolish young man of thirty-four when this began for the first time. I was very much in love with a woman younger and even more foolish than I: Evangeline Graciér. She was to turn thirty only a few days after our wedding date, a fact she reminded me of constantly. We were, I must admit, rather unorthodox about the whole business; I had a fairly large fortune left to me by my parent upon their deaths that I had enhanced through wise investments in ventures and companies in London and throughout England. Trusting my money to protect us from all but the basest of slanderous tongues, we purchased this manor and set ourselves up as husband and wife long before the marriage vows were spoken. Her parents, strict Catholics, were outwardly appalled, but I do believe that, in their hearts, they were happy that their daughter had secured for herself a safe and comfortable future, even if there was perhaps some sinful behavior in the process. I am quite sure that they trusted in God to redeem Evangeline's soul and absolve her for all of her sins, for, despite her engagement with me, she remained a devout Catholic as well. The carriage we rode in yesterday was actually purchased so that she could go to Mass and confession every Sunday regularly and any other day besides."

Here a fond smile curved the old man's pale lips and Mr. Harrison paused as though savoring one of the long-past memories he had recalled, like a vintner enjoying a bottle of fine wine from the cache in his cellars. A cloud of pain darted across the lined face and the smile faded as Mr. Harrison resumed his story.

"However, it seems that Satan had other plans for us. Our groundskeeper, a fine old chap called Mr. Parker, grew ill suddenly and died. We were saddened, naturally, but illness had been ravaging the country for some time before then, so we thought nothing sinister of it. In retrospect, I should have thought it odd that only three days after poor Mr. Parker's funeral, a man appeared at the door and presented himself as a Jack-of-all-trades seeking a job. He had fine credentials—one letter even written by the Baroness de Marke—which was quite odd given his occupation. I hesitated to offer him work, but I placed a call to the Baroness, who assured me that she had indeed recommended the fellow. And so, God help me, I hired him as the replacement groundskeeper."

Mr. Harrison's eyes closed tightly and his face screwed up in a rictus of agony and hate. He drew a deep breath and exhaled, hissing between his teeth. His eyes opened and his hands tightened on the armrests of his chair.

"Sylvester Jennings. That was his name. Even at the beginning I was uncomfortable around him: he was very handsome and he had an air of impish good humor about him that the women seemed to find charming. He flirted with and teased the maids, something I frowned heartily upon, but I was willing to forgive him such indiscretions given my own and also having seen each Sunday that he bent to prayer and was truly repentant at confession. Life continued this way for some weeks until we settled into a pattern. By this time, Evangeline had made fast friends with Jennings, and that was when strange things started happening." Nigel paused, sighed, and continued again.

"It was nothing very terrible at first; sometimes there would be an accident on a small scale—a maid would drop laundry in the dirt coming back from the clothesline and have to wash it again, a cook would lose a utensil—small things, irritating things that only harmed through frustration. But, over time, the incidents became more frequent, more dangerous. One day, a stable hand was kicked by a horse of exceedingly gentle temperament. The next, a cabinet tipped over on a housekeeper and broke several of her bones. Boiling water was spilled on the cook, the servant doing laundry was burned terribly and inexplicably by an iron she swore had not been used. The list continues on, each time with the hazard becoming greater and the accident more harmful. Discontent grew, fed on whispers of suspicion. Servants started to leave and the villagers stopped visiting. They truly believed that we had been cursed. I was at my wits' end.

"Jennings was the only one of the servants who seemed unaffected. Evangeline, too, was not frightened by the incidents. Indeed, she positively glowed with joy. She would spend hours in the chapel, praying mightily, and when she returned she seemed happier yet, but her smile had an edge of secrecy that I had never before seen and that alarmed me so, God help me, I took to spying on her.

"I had at first suspected that which every man does when the woman he loves seems inexplicably joyful: I thought that she was dallying with Jennings. He was certainly pleasing company to her and I hated the thought of how far that companionship might go. And as I watched, I felt that my fears were confirmed at every turn: they were always together, she always radiant, he always solicitous. But no matter how long I watched or how deeply I pried, I could not ever catch them in a truly damning situation. No kisses, no touches, no trysts. I imagined that perhaps I had trapped her in a relation that she no longer desired—her engagement with me—that she had fallen out of love with me and in love with Jennings, but that she felt obliged by her own moral principles to remain faithful despite her change of heart. With that conclusion, despair and fury grew in my heart.

"I ached at the thought that I, however unwittingly, had caused harm to my beloved—for she was still beloved to me—and I burned at the thought that the despicable Jennings had been the one to take her away. However, I swallowed my pride and approached her one night after dinner. She was sitting in the sitting room, playing chess against herself—rather skillfully, I might add, when, before Jennings' arrival, she barely knew the names of each piece. She seemed surprised when I entered as it was my habit at the time to retire to the library after dinner, but she smiled at me and, seeing the welter of emotions running across my face, bade me to speak.

"I confessed to her my suspicions and told her that, if she did so desire, I would release her from our engagement so that she might pursue her relationship with Jennings in peace with her conscience. I was stunned when she began to laugh."

Mr. Harrison stood abruptly, bumping the dining table again with enough force to set the remaining unbroken crystal rattling. His chair screeched back across the herringbone-patterned wood floor as the old man strode to the sideboard and jerked open a cabinet with fumbling hands. He got out a heavy crystal tumbler and a matching decanter half-filled with amber fluid and poured himself a generous three fingers of the liquid into the glass. The rich smell of Scotch whisky filled the room. Lilith's eyes widened in surprise when the frail-looking old gentleman tossed the alcohol back without apparently noticing the mellow heat of the expensive vintage. Mr. Harrison refilled his glass and, lifting the decanter slightly, offered his guests a drink. No one accepted the offer, but Mr. Harrison refilled his glass and returned to the table.

"Evangeline, when she regained control of herself after her fit of laughter, assured me that she was as likely to be involved with Jennings as she was to fly to the moon. She took me by the hands and drew me down to sit in the chair opposite her, across the chessboard.

"'Can you keep a secret?' she asked me, but she did not pause for an answer. Instead, she continued to speak as though there was someone else with us who I could neither see nor hear. 'Yes, of course, and he is to be my husband, you know, so I must tell. Yes, this is how it should be.'

"I tell you that I was now convinced that Evangeline had gone quite mad. She leapt to her feet and began to pace 'round the room, talking with such passionate conviction and wild gesticulation that, if not for her words, she could be taken for one smitten by the Rapture of the Lord. But, oh! Such words, such poisoned words fell from her lips: 'Can you not see, my love?' she raved. 'Can you not see that this place is a den of iniquity and sin? How low have we fallen? But I have found a way back to God, a way by which we all might hear His voice again; by punishing the sinners, the flock will understand the way and will not stray from the path of righteousness!'"

Mr. Harrison stared down into the last dregs of amber whisky that he held in his crystal tumbler. He shook like a sapling in a gale as he hurriedly swallowed the last few drops. When he continued his tale, his voice was hoarse and choked with grief.

"'I have found a way to punish the sinners,' she cried. 'It was shown to me by my dear friend Sylvester, who, like me, sees the corruption of the world. Together we will purge this place of evil and make it worth of the Kingdom of Heaven. Would you help me, beloved?'

"It was then that I realized the true magnitude of the mistake I had made in hiring Jennings. Poor Evangeline had finally fallen victim to the terrible combination of her sweet naïveté and her passionate love of God. It was clear that Jennings had overthrown her reason and perverted her gentle nature in the months that he had been employed here. He had manipulated her expertly, creating a monster of terrible power whose actions seemed to it to be righteous and good; what, in her eyes, could be more just than punishing the wicked for their sins in order to save humanity from damnation? It sounds so absurd to us, so self-serving and evil, but Evangeline believed with all the fervor of her heart. And yet, I had not even begun to plumb the depths of her madness, nor could I discern Jennings' motives for twisting Evangeline about as he had. I did, however—feeling that I really had no other choice in the matter, agree to assist her as best I could so that she would take me further into her confidence—from which I had been excluded shortly after Jennings had first arrived—and share with me what I was certain she and Jennings had brought about on my estate. And so she told me to meet her in the chapel at the stroke of midnight."

"All that evening, I hatched wild plans on how I could remove Jennings, but the only two feasible solutions seemed to be to either kill him—which I could not bear the thought of, no matter how much ill he had done—or call the police. But I feared what he might do to Evangeline if either of those came to pass. I wanted to protect her from harm more than anything else. As it happened, I had resolved nothing by the time I crossed the grounds to the chapel that night.

"I was promptly on time that night, the clock had just begun to strike the midnight hour when I entered, but she and Jennings had already been working for some time when I arrived. They bade me to sit in one of the pews at the front while they laid out an assortment of things on the altar: a large bowl of some black stone, a knife, a few candles, a cloyingly sweet incense that burned in a censor taken from the chapel stores, a heavy tome—the Bible, and a few sheets of paper that lay alongside a quill pen. What followed would have been laughable under any other circumstances, but there, watching as they chanted in stentorian tones and drew figures in the air with candles and the knife and burned more and more of the sickening incense until the air hung heavy with its stench and the greasy feel of evil, there I felt no cause for laughter. Evangeline and Jennings _believed_, and believed with such force that their madness began to creep up on me and I had to restrain myself lest I join them in their chilling display. Old superstitious rituals, mountebank tricks, poor impersonations of necromancy: all of these made their appearance that night. Evangeline and that man—evil cad that he was—finished after some time; I know not how long. By now the entirety of the altar had been scribbled over with strange devices written in a dark, unpleasant color.

"'We have warded ourselves from the beast,' Evangeline informed me. 'Now we may call out for aid in the punishment of the sinners.' I asked her then for the name of the person they were seeking to punish, their so-called sinner, but she just giggled, a horrible, insane titter so unlike her normal laugh, and she refused to tell. I began to question again, but at that moment Jennings produced a cage from under the altar.

"Inside the cage was a cat, an orange tabby tomcat. It was one of the scruffy ones that hung about in the barn and stables, living off the rodents that sought the grain. It screamed and clawed and bit at Jennings as the man dragged it out of the cage and ripped at Evangeline when he handed it to her. Blood streamed from Evangeline's arms and I could see curls of skin hanging from her forearms where the cat had raked her with its claws, but she did not seem to notice. Her eyes were wide and vacant and her expression was as one excited, like a child at a carnival. She pulled the cat's head back and Jennings cut its throat so deeply that white bone flashed sickeningly through the rent before showers of blood fountained past. The poor cat struggled mightily in its death throes, spraying both Evangeline and Jennings with crimson gore, but they managed to wrestle it into position and caught most of the blood in the black bowl. When the cat was dead and the streams of blood slowed to steady drips, Evangeline dropped the limp body to the floor like a dirty rag.

"Jennings put the Bible in the bowl and began to chant in a language I had never before heard. If all the malice in the world was given voice and hatred and fury were its grammar and syntax, those would have been the words those shape all the evil in the world would assume. They tumbled over each other, harsh and oily and insipid, filled with undertones of insanity and rooted deep in destructive rage, spiraling higher and higher, building to a fevered pitch until finally, as the Bible became fully saturated with blood, Evangeline bent over the altar and wrote on the cover, just over the cross, so that her writing and the symbol became one in an unholy unity. Jennings spoke a word, a name, and the air trembled and filled with the stench of burned feathers and rotting flesh.

"Ash and burning shreds of what looked like paper fell from somewhere near the ceiling in a strange silver-grey rain, fine and even, that filled the whole chapel. It vanished before it touched the ground, but the smell of burning became even stronger. A shape began to appear, writhing out of the bowl and the book, covered in a thin membrane that bulged and rippled with the movements of the creature inside. It grew larger and larger until it was the size of a man and then the fleshy envelope was ripped apart, sending bloody pieces of tissue scattering through the air. The thing had spread its wings. Even then, though it should have been clearly visible in the light of the candles that were clustered all around the place it had appeared, it was difficult to see. It was as if my eyes couldn't focus on it and my gaze kept sliding off to the sides. But Evangeline stepped toward it, holding out her hands welcomingly, and the form that had been so nebulous suddenly became perfectly clear.

"It was an angel, beautiful and terrible, his great wings spreading out to tumble over the edges of the altar in a snowy froth. There was not a trace of blood or filth anywhere on him even as the ashes continued to fall; he was luminous with some inner light. The angel took Evangeline's hand as he stepped down off of the altar and she cried out with joy. She began to beg the glorious presence for divine aid in punishing the wicked.

"In that moment, my heart wavered. I, who believed in the sanctity and purity of God and his angels—even if I was not so devout as Evangeline nor so scrupulous in my following of the Bible's teachings and the precepts of the Catholic Church, was confronted by a sick reality: an angel summoned and strengthened by sacrifice. My mind rebelled; I would not—_could_ not!—accept such a reality. The very foundations of the belief that had been a part of my character from early in my childhood were shaken and I did the only thing I could to protect the core of my basis for judgment: I rejected the vision of the angel. It could not be. I could no longer sit as a silent observer in the pew. I jumped up and began to back away simultaneously, knocking the pew over in my haste to be away. So startled was I by the loud clatter of the pew on the flagstone floor that I jumped again, this time tumbling backwards over the very pew I had just upset. My head struck the floor and my vision darkened. Blindly, I laid my hands on the nearest object and hurled it with desperate force at the impossible angel, all the while consumed with a sense of wrongness of horrible apprehension. The winged being caught the book I had thrown—a Bible that must have tumbled off of the pew I had overturned—with one hand and laughed a laugh like a thousand silver bells ringing in harmony. The sound swelled to fill the chapel. It sounded mocking to my ears.

"'No!' I shouted. 'You are false, you cannot be!' Suddenly the laughter fell into dissonance and the angel shrieked terribly, whether in rage or pain I could not guess. He flung the book away. His form was changing and, for the briefest of instants, his hair, once palest blond, flashed a deep red and the six pristine wings that adorned his back—seraphim's wings—appeared tattered and torn, even as I watched their edges curling away into smoke as worms of fire crawled through the grimed feathers.

"The once-angel's new visage was terrible to behold and almost immediately I was seized by the desire for the beautiful seraph to reappear. Evangeline, too, cried out against the alteration in the creature's form. As if responding to our wishes, the angel's form, which had been shifting alarmingly between a vision of celestial glory and of infernal fury as if the creature could not remember what its countenance should be, settled—the seraph had returned. I lay there on the cold floor, numb with shock, as Evangeline began to speak."

"It was an angel?" Samuel interrupted Mr. Harrison, unable to restrain himself any longer. Mr. Harrison steepled his fingers over his glass and sighed, frowning at the Finder in a contemplative manner.

"Yes and no. I will try to explain. You must forgive me if my story seems roundabout and poorly connected to the events which brought you here, Finder Samuel," Mr. Harrison said slowly, clearly choosing his words with care. "However, I believe that knowing the whole of the truth as it pertains to me and this estate will help to clarify, among other things, the question you have just asked." The old man allowed his troubled green eyes to rest on each of the people sitting around the table with him.

All of them were tense, but the pale-haired exorcist at least looked much improved in comparison to his prior condition. There was an incredible pile of empty dishes stacked neatly in front of him and he was still eating, nibbling on a muffin. Crown Clown was glowing brightly and steadily. Kanda's face was blank, unreadable, but his rigid posture spoke to Mr. Harrison of pain endured. The Finder was troubled and unhappy. Lilith and Lane were quiet and their heads were bowed. Mr. Harrison felt seep sympathy for them; they had been very young children living with their mother, the housekeeper, on the estate when the trouble had begun and the fear and superstition that surrounded the events of some fifty years ago were still strong.

"If you had any suspicion that those past events were recurring, why didn't you tell any of the Finders that were sent here what you are telling us now?" Samuel sounded frustrated and on the verge of tears. "If we had known, we might have been able to prevent so many Finders from being killed!"

The elderly gentleman's face crumpled and a few tears squeezed out from under his wrinkled lids. "You will have to forgive an old man for clinging to the hope that has sustained him for so long, that the thing that destroyed my wife would never return. I suspected, when the attacks on the villagers began, that the events brought about by Evangeline and Jennings were repeating themselves, but then a young man in white showed up on my doorstep, asking me about the attacks and speaking of these…_akuma_. I leapt at the chance to believe the precautions I had taken, the sacrifices I have made were sufficient, that these new horrors were unrelated. Too, the nature of the attacks was different; I will tell you of the first, but understand that what has happened here in the last few weeks showed a level of brutality and bloodlust that was unlike anything I had seen before. There were deaths before, as well, but…I think that I must continue with the story before the anomalies I am trying to illustrate become clear. Would that be acceptable?"

Samuel had become sullen and Kanda remained perfectly still, but Allen nodded for Mr. Harrison to continue. The cursed exorcist would have spoken his assent but was afraid of spraying muffin crumbs over the table. Their host settled himself deeper into his chair and ran a finger around the lip of his glass absently as he resumed his tale.

"As I said, Evangeline began to speak to the angel, pleading with him to help her strike a blow against the sinners. The angelic being was agitated and grew angry with her when she caught at his arm; he shoved her away.

"'More of your petty little tricks? More little _accidents_?' the creature mocked her. 'You cannot even imagine true punishment; what right do you have to speak to me of dealing out retribution?' Evangeline was distraught and burst into tears, sobbing that she would do better if only he would guide her. Jennings was curiously silent, but he seemed somehow satisfied as the creature turned back to Evangeline.

"'You wish for my guidance?' the creature asked, spreading out his wings so that he could drape them over her and pull her closer. I could see only her feet; the rest was shielded from view by the pure-white feathers. I heard her say yes, and the angel nodded.

"'Then you shall have it.' He sounded triumphant as he bent his head down under the canopy of his own feathers. He must have kissed her—I could see her arms as she reached out to clutch at his shoulders—and then she was lying crumpled on the stone at his feet. The creature folded his wings away behind him and smiled at me: 'Behold,' he commanded, 'for I have made her anew.' And when Evangeline got slowly to her feet and raised her head, I could see that he had spoken truly. Evangeline was gone. Her expressive face was still and expressionless and her eyes, which had once sparkled with life and happiness, now had a malevolent intelligence gazing out from behind them.

"'Go,' the angel-shaped thing ordered her. 'Go, and deliver divine punishment unto those who have strayed from salvation.' Evangeline turned woodenly, an unfamiliar doll in the hands of a puppeteer, and picked up the knife that Jennings had killed the cat with from the table. Holding it before her and moving without moving her gaze from a single point, she walked down the aisle to the doors of the chapel, pushing them open. The draught from outside cleared some of the fug from the incense and set the falling ash swirling. I called after her but she either did not hear in her current state or she did not care to respond. She walked out into the night and the doors closed behind her. I was alone with the false angel and Jennings.

"The angel was standing next to Jennings on the low dais under the altar and they were both looking at me. I pulled myself up and tried to run after Evangeline, both to escape the chapel and to try and prevent whatever diabolic act the creature had sent her off to perform. I had made it only a few steps when I could no longer move. It was not that I had no control over my limbs, but rather as though I had been encased in glass; I could feel my tendons and muscles move in response to my urgings, but my limbs were held fast by some outside force.

"'Now, now,' Jennings scolded me as if I was some naughty child caught with their finger in a pie. 'We can't have you running off and getting into trouble, now could we?' I wanted to scream but found that my jaw would not open, so my words became only an incoherent howl. I was turned about by unseen hands and found myself facing the pair on the dais. The creature stood behind Jennings, his arms wrapped around the man's neck and chest, murmuring in his ear. Jennings smirked and, turning his head, kissed the thing he had summoned. It responded by caressing him and pressing closer, moving in a way that left no doubt as to its desires. Jennings said something to it, too low for me to hear, and glanced in my direction. The angel-shaped thing straightened, looking put out, and glared at me. Whatever is was that had held my limbs now crushed my chest as well and stopped up my mouth and nose. I was suffocating in clear air.

"As block spots popped in my head, Jennings spared me a moment's attention to tell me, 'How unfortunate for you that I am not one for voyeurism—I'm afraid that I have no desire to share. You'll just have to wait there until we're all done.' I passed out."

The story was interrupted by the groan of overstressed wood. All eyes sought the source of the sound, falling upon Kanda, whose knuckles were white on the armrests of his chair. Mr. Harrison regarded him sadly.

"It showed a proclivity toward sexual actions all those years ago. When you were…attacked, Mr. Kanda, I lost all hope that these events were occurring at the hands of the akuma. I did mean to tell you, but the opportune moment never seemed to present itself."

"But you are certain that the same creature is causing all of the attacks now?" Allen wanted to confirm. "Why would the thing disappear for half a century only to turn up again now?" He was feeling well enough to participate more actively since Crown Clown had ceased draining him of vital energy, drawing instead on the chemical energy of the food he had consumed. The old gentleman nodded.

"For the first question, I am sure beyond any doubt. As for the second…as I said before, some things are best explained by simply telling the story." The dapper old man seemed frustrated by his own obscure responses, but Allen hastened to assure him that if he felt that such a method was best, it likely was. Mr. Harrison accepted the frail-looking exorcist's reassurances with a grateful half-bow and cleared his throat.

"So then. When I awoke, it was late in the morning; I could tell from the way the light slanted in through the chapel windows. Jennings and the beast were gone, as were all of the accoutrements that had been used in the summoning. The altar cloth had been removed, likely in order to hide the blood that stained it, but the altar itself had not been wiped clean and was still smudged with dried blood. I righted the pew I had knocked over and left the chapel in a state of trepidation, meaning to return to the manor house.

"When I entered the gardens on the way to the back door, one of the servants who had chosen to remain in my service came running up, out of breath and yet trying to speak. She plucked at my sleeve and directed me into the house, recovering enough to speak as she did so.

"'It's horrible, sir!' she reported. 'Someone's killed Marie, but we don't know who, and there's an unholy mess all over the place. We didn't clean up on account of thinking you might want to call the police, sir, so that they could have a look, too.'

"Marie was the cook here at that time. She was very popular, very friendly. She had been engaged to marry a village man, but it was supposed to be a secret and their frequent meetings were to have remained unnoticed. Needless to say, they did not; every member of the household knew and, as far as I believed, they all wished her well in her upcoming marriage. I mention this because I am fairly certain that Marie's relationship with her beau was what brought Evangeline's wrath down upon her, and I have no doubt that Marie's trysts with the villager were the sin that Evangeline cited when she called Marie a sinner. The hypocrisy of the situation was not lost on me as I entered the room in which Marie still lay—and found that Evangeline was already there, grieving alongside the rest of the household. I will speak of that shortly.

"Marie's death had not been an easy one. She lay in a storage room just off the kitchen in a litter of upset shelves and scattered ingredients, half-draped against an overturned table. She had been strangled with the ribbons on her own apron. The police were called—I could see no way to avoid it without drawing suspicion that might bring about harm to Evangeline—and, after examining the scene and the body and doing all of the things detectives like to do at crime scenes, they declared that the murdered was most likely male and familiar to Marie. They cited the strength it would take to strangle and restrain a struggling victim, especially one as strong as Marie, and the fact that Marie could have escaped through the second door that led outside, which was used for taking deliveries of foodstuffs, if she had felt threatened. The police collected the alibis of the various members of the household and I soon realized that I, who perfectly fit the broad categorization of the murdered, had no means by which to prove my innocence without giving away Evangeline's involvement.

"She herself delivered an alibi for both of us: she told the detective that she and I had gone to the chapel the night before to pray for absolution from our sins and that, given the late hour at which we had gone to ensure our privacy, we had fallen asleep there. Several of the servants were able to confirm that they had seen both Evangeline and myself returning to the house from the direction of the chapel that morning and that neither of us had been seen in the house late the previous evening when the murder was presumed to have occurred. Jennings also provided an alibi, telling the policeman who questioned him that he had been visiting with a friend that night. The stableboy and one of the maids who lived nearby both said that they had seen lights in the windows of Jennings' house—the groundskeeper has always been given a separate house as part of their payment—and had heard two voices, one Jennings', one belonging to someone else, talking. The police left without having made any arrests or pronouncing anyone suspect.

"There were two weeks blessedly free of all incidents and I heard no more from Evangeline until, late one evening, I overheard a conversation between her and Jennings. They were in the library, arguing. Evangeline had been growing noticeably distressed over the course of the last several days, unable to find a task that held her attention for more than a few moments, unable to sit or focus or attend to a conversation. Jennings had been surly and it seemed that their new dispositions had kindled the sparks of contention between the two. She demanded that they begin summoning the creature again; Jennings agreed, but could not seem to feel the same desire for delivering divine retribution as burned in Evangeline's soul. He balked and tried to dissuade her, but she was adamant. Finally, he gave in.

"They decided that it would be foolishly risky to commit a murder again—it seemed odd, but even in the depths of their depravity, they retained a sort of animalistic instinct that ensured their survival. They could not draw further attention from the police, who were obviously dissatisfied with leaving the murder unsolved. As it was, nothing untoward happened for a further few days, then, quite suddenly, a child from the nearby village disappeared. It was not a common occurrence, so it drew some attention from the police, especially as there had been a murder so recently, but disappearances were not unheard of. It was approaching midwinter and in that time these woods were still wild enough to be prowled by wolves and other large animals. A child who, by his mother's own words, was not given to paying attention to his surroundings and who frequently wandered off and was lost would have been easy prey for such creatures. I, obviously, had my suspicions as to the true nature of the disappearance. There was a great hubbub and a mighty outcry: search parties were formed and they combed through the woods incessantly; police lurked everywhere, swooping down on everyone and asking thousands of questions no one seemed to know the answers to; the boy's mother was distraught. They finally found the little boy three days later. He was dead, his body partially eaten by wolves and half-hidden in the debris left behind by one of the winter storms.

"The incredible tension ebbed away like water from a broken vessel. That something so tragic could come as a relief should be some indication of how terrified the villagers were at the thought of some sort of unnatural, arcane force. We here had known wolves and had lost livestock and children to them for years; losing another child now seemed far better to another murder. I, too, was lulled by the boy's death. It seemed so unrelated to the murder that I knew Evangeline had played a vital role in that I was able to convince myself for a time that she had ceased her activities. It was in that happy frame of mind that I continued for the next two months.

"During that time there were several more disappearances, all attributed to the wolves. It was soon a pressing matter and it was decided in the villages that something must be done to stop the ravages of the animals: they set up a great hunt for the wolves. It was no small task that they undertook; winters here are long and harsh and linger long past their welcome. However, loss had made the villagers keen on their task and they set out into the deep snow and icy winds well-armed and thickly-insulated. Nearly twenty of the beasts were brought in, all told, a surprisingly large number as packs tend to be smaller. I dismissed that anomaly as well, thinking that they must have simply found enough game in our flocks and families to survive the winter. Soon there was not a single wolf left in this valley or the surrounding areas. We felt safe once again and we welcomed the spring that came bursting from the frozen ground with the daffodils that almost everyone had around their houses. It was March.

"As I said, after the hunt, we enjoyed a fairly long respite from the loss of friends and family. So it was much consternation that we found another body on the first Sunday of the month. I was among the first to see the body. It was just after Mass and the congregation, which included Jennings, Evangeline, and myself, was beginning to move outside and disperse. Those of us who were first out of the doors were met by an appalling sight. I was among those first few; Evangeline was with me and Jennings was just behind us.

"A young woman—a girl really, no more than seventeen—lay out in the snow next to the flagstone walkways of the churchyard. She had been eviscerated and torn, with great gashes splitting her pale flesh. Even as we watched, her blood oozed from the gaping rents and steamed in the cold air. It was painfully obvious that this atrocity had occurred just as the Mass was ending. She was close enough that her screams should have been clearly audible within the church, but not one person had heard her as she had been murdered. Wolves were not a plausible explanation and now, presented with a situation in which I could no longer explain away the occult forces with which I knew my fiancée was associated, I turned to Evangeline and Jennings.

"Evangeline uttered a half-smothered scream when she saw the body and pressed a hand to her mouth as if to suppress the urge to vomit. She was pale, her eyes wide and horrified. Jennings as well looked shaken and the two stared at each other, each shaking their heads in denial, at which their faces became even more sickly and drawn. I suddenly understood: they were no longer in control of the beast they had summoned all those weeks before in my presence."

"How can that be?" Samuel interrupted, looking irritated. "The summoned creature should only appear as it is bidden by the summoners; they _must_ have give it instructions to act while they were in the church so that they had an alibi—you told us earlier that after the cook's murder, nobody else was killed. They must have been biding their time until they could act without being suspect—" he trailed off as Mr. Harrison shook his head with a short, jerky motion.

"No, no, Evangeline and Jennings had been acting all along. I confronted Evangeline as soon as we reached the estate after we and everyone else at the church was questioned by the police. We spoke in this very room. She was agitated, upset, and quite clearly suffering some sort of mental breakdown. Evangeline paced and clawed at her clothes and face with her nails until I had to physically restrain her. She muttered wildly and refused to answer my questions for so long that I felt that I would never gain the information I sought. Then her words spilled out in a great torrent, her tone hateful and vicious and crazed. She spoke of long talks with Jennings after the cook's murder, when secrecy became of even greater import. They decided to divert attention from themselves by committing their crimes in a guise that would be dismissed as no more than a terrible unplanned tragedy: they used their black magic to call the wolves into the valley and ordered their summoned beast to take on the shape of one of them. They controlled the pack, directing its attacks. That's why there were so many; the beast was feeding, gaining strength as Evangeline and Jennings ordered it to attack their 'sinners.' Finally, it grew strong enough to shake off the bonds placed upon it by the contract with its summoners. It was free."

"If it was free, why did it attack that girl in the churchyard?" Allen asked, looking down at the table.

The old gentleman sighed wearily and rubbed one hand against the knuckles of the other, trying to sooth the ache in his joints. His lips tightened into a grimace as he responded: "For many days after the murder at the church, I asked myself that. Evangeline locked herself in her room and refused to open the door, barricading it against all entry. I had ordered Jennings to remain within the groundskeeper's house, a command which, as far as I know, he obeyed. They were terrified, waiting for their beast to return and devour them, You see, it _wanted_ to continue to attack: it fed on the negative emotion of its victims and what better way to prolong its feast than by maintaining the terrible uncertainty that clouded our eyes. The cocktail of fear, despair, and anger that the two murders and the many disappearances had created in the heart of every person in the valley must have been a heady drink for it indeed. So it waited and devoured our pain, delaying its next attack to prolong its banquet."

"So it did attack again?" Samuel wanted to know. The Finder was toying with the utensils before him absently, pushing them around on the table with his forefinger. He stopped long enough to gaze searchingly at Mr. Harrison. "Once you knew all of this, why did you not go to the police?"

"And have them do what?" Mr. Harrison yelled, his voice cracking with pain. He slammed his fists down on the table and made the flatware jump. "Do you think that they would believe a story about a self-righteous cult of two summoning some sort of devil to do God's work? No! It would only have made the situation worse, like throwing sparks into a powder keg. Already every man, woman, and child suspected another and every villager was walking on eggshells around every other person, fearing attack and hoping to avoid drawing attention. Fights broke out as people accused each other and the rumors floating about grew wilder and wilder. To invite the police into such an environment would only convince the villagers that one of their number was behind the attacks and they would fall on him like wolves upon a wounded deer. Such chaos and fear-fueled hate would only feed the beast more."

Allen glanced over at Kanda, who had been silent for some time. The dark-haired exorcist's eyes were closed and his broad shoulders slumped forward. The swordsman's strong hands were folded into the soft white sleeves of his robe, but the sleeve of his right hand twitched spasmodically as the older exorcist suppressed the habitual grab for Mugen's hilt. Mr. Harrison's gaze slid over Allen's pale face, then followed the boy's line of sight to stare at Kanda. The aged gentleman heaved a weary sigh and scrubbed his gnarled hands over his face, speaking from behind them, his voice much calmer though it still trembled with remembered pain.

"For two days I pleaded with Evangeline through the door of her rooms; still she refused to see anyone, denied herself food and drink, and kept silent. Then, when I could no longer bear the self-imposed isolation she maintained, I summoned two of the stablehands and together we broke down the door. I entered Evangeline's rooms and found that my fiancée, who I suspected already of being of imperfect reason, had gone quite mad. She was unkempt and frightened, darting around the room like a little bird throwing itself against a window, and when I began to speak to her of her summoned creature she cried out and collapsed to the floor.

"I tried to calm her, to reason with her, but to no avail. I tried to ask her of the creature's abilities, its nature, for all I knew was that it fed like a parasite upon emotion. But after several hours, the only words she had spoken were "diary" and "it's here." I searched her room. Evangeline didn't move, didn't protest what she normally would have considered the basest invasion of privacy. Her diary had been wedged between the wall and the nightstand beside her bed. In it she had written everything. Despite the awful situation, her diary made me laugh because only Evangeline in her sweet naivety could believe that her diary was sacrosanct and was a safe place to write all of her secrets. I used that to my advantage and spent the rest of the day closeted in my study, reading her diary and sending the servants to retrieve books form the library as needed. By nightfall, I knew enough about the creature that I was confident I could combat it."

"That's terribly convenient," Samuel interjected, suspicion coloring his tone. "If I were that creature and had so much power over her, I would have made her write complete rubbish in her diary. That way any challengers would be armed with erroneous information and false confidence. How could you believe anything she had written about it?"

"It does seem strange that it would give away it position so easily," the pale-haired exorcist added softly. "Only a fool or an egoist would think that it would be safe for information about them to be written down where essentially anyone could read it."

Mr. Harrison nodded. "I can understand your doubts," he said, "but you must remember that I was young and foolish at the time. And, looking back, the diary did prove to be an excellent and accurate source. I was willing to believe what was written there for precisely the reason you just mentioned, Allen. The summoned beast had already shown itself to me and had demonstrated its power that night in the chapel. It had overwhelmed me completely with its strength. I knew that it was proud and I hoped that its pride would induce it to make such a foolish mistake as to allow a guileless woman to record its actions."

"What did the diary say, then? What did she write?" Allen's voice was intense; here finally was the information he had been waiting for, the pivotal data he needed to fight the creature that had attacked Kanda and the Finders and so many other before.

"I told you that the creature fed on negative emotion, didn't I?" The tired-looking old man mused, looking down at the table as though he was gathering his thoughts from the polished grain of the wood. Allen nodded as vigorously as his condition would allow; even with Crown Clown's intercession on his behalf, he still felt a little faint from blood loss and rapid motions made a kaleidoscope of stars burst behind his eyes. The pale teen was once again grateful for his inhuman endurance. Even with the vast meal Lilith had been feeding him as Mr. Harrison recounted the history of the estate, he still felt drained and tired, but he no longer felt the deathly lethargy that had weighted his bloodless limbs as he had been carried into the dining room. His grey eyes darted in Kanda's direction and he was relieved to see that the sword-wielder's pallor was less pronounced, though Allen suspected that the Japanese exorcist was relying on the combination of his reserves of stubbornness and his tattoo to maintain his fierce concentration on the story.

"Well," Mr. Harrison continued. "That is not entirely correct. Such a statement would be an understatement of the beast's capacity to feed: it devoured every emotion possible from the spectra, though Evangeline wrote that it loved fear and hate and suffering best for their potency and flavor. Lust, too, was a favorite. She knew a surprising amount about it; apparently it had been one of the many creatures she had studied during her childhood—she had always had a fascination with the beasts her Church declared evil; it was the child's interest in the forbidden—and she gave it its proper name: incubus."

Allen's eyes widened and words sprang unbidden from his lips: "I've read about those! They're supposed to be demons, but," his brow furrowed, "they're just a story. Right?" Kanda glared at him and Allen abruptly realized how ridiculous it was for someone who had spent years of his life chasing akuma and dealing with creatures most would dismiss as mythical to be balking at the thought of a demon. God only knew he had faced enough demons before, what was one more?

Mr. Harrison, though, took the question quite seriously, perhaps because he couldn't know what the Black Order really had been created for, and answered in a gentle, thoughtful tone. "I wish very much that it had just been a story, but the beast is indeed real. I gave up a great deal to combat it all those years ago, but I fear that my ability to hold it at bay and nullify its powers has finally slipped away. I have grown ineffective in my dotage."

"How did you fight it?" Kanda's voice was rough and strained, but his typical brusqueness was obviously either unaffected or amplified by his current condition and was particularly startling after his long silence. The silence following the question was incredible: all motion was stilled, all noise ceased, a feeling of pressure building up in the already-tense atmosphere. The older exorcist scowled at the others in the dining room.

"Tch." Kanda huffed out a breath from between his teeth, making even the innocent puff of air sound scornful and derisive. "Were you all planning on sitting around and having story time, or are we actually going to fight this thing?" Suddenly, Allen understood why Kanda had been silent for so long: he had been biding his time, searching for information he could use to battle the thing that had attacked and humiliated him; but now his patience had run out and the slow fire of rage that the pale teen knew had to have been burning in his mercurial compatriot since he collapsed in the forest and even before had finally reached critical pressure. Despite the atrocious situation he was in, Allen found himself giggling quietly at the image of Kanda's head blasting off his shoulders as all of his pent-up rage came erupting out. He stopped immediately when Kanda fried him with a blue-eyed glare that clearly said that Kanda needed to do_ something_ to ease his fury and that lopping off a cursed white head might be just the ticket. Down the table from the pair of exorcists, Mr. Harrison was taken aback; the quietly suffering, dispassionate exorcist had suddenly revealed himself as a firebrand. The dapper gentleman fought the urge to look away when the burning, fever-bright cobalt gaze of the black-haired man settled on him.

"I will explain how I learned the method by which the incubus could be contained—" Nigel began, but he was instantly halted by Kanda's harsh-spoken interruption.

"I don't care how you figured it out. I want to know how you defeated it." Samuel reached out a hand as though he meant to restrain Kanda from his sudden turn to aggression, a remonstration starting to spill from his lips. The Japanese swordsman glanced at the Finder and rested one hand on Mugen's hilt. Given Kanda's reputation among the Finders, it was not surprising when Samuel backed down, falling silent and allowing his hand to fall back into his lap.

"Very well," Mr. Harrison began shakily, one liver-spotted hand fumbling for the rosary about his throat that Allen had seen before in the carriage. The old man drew lifted it over his head and held it out in one hand. At the end of the smooth, polished beads dangled the odd rune that had niggled at Allen's memory before—and the cursed teen knew where he had seen it now. It was the same as the one he had seen on the fireplace of the Bookman's secret room he had stumbled into while chasing Timcampy.

The glyph became the center of attention as it spun unconcernedly on the end of the rosary. Its sharp, silvery edges glinted in the light as it rotated, little sparkles of radiance dancing off of the points and planes of the metal. It was something like a cross between a sickle and an anchor, Allen decided. The top curved into a point with a descending arm and the shaft of that arm was pierced through by a cross-bar. The point of the top was directed toward the end of the crosspiece, so the eye naturally traced a continuous circular path across the glyph. It was distracting and made thinking difficult.

"You probably saw this above the gates as you entered—the main gates are unused, by the way; the gates on the way to the village are the only ones that remain unlocked, though the locks did not seem to pose much of a problem for you." Mr. Harrison actually sounded amused, but Allen blushed. "Its purpose it to provide a means of emptying the mind entirely, thereby denying the incubus the material it needs to mount its most dangerous offence. Kanda has already seen what the incubus is capable of, as have I: it can mould its shape as it wills and frequently assumes the form of whatever it believes will hurt us most. When it last tried to kill me some fifty years ago, it wore the shape of Evangeline and very nearly succeeded. I was able to resist that image for one reason alone: on that same night as I felt myself capable of destroying the incubus who had made my fiancée a murderer, Evangeline left her rooms and, in what I believe was an attempt to flee the horrors her mind created in her madness, hanged herself from the railing of the great staircase. Still, seeing her before me again shook me to the core and gave the beast enough time to strike me."

Allen glanced at Kanda, wide-eyes. _So this is why he said that I could stay, that it was alright because he knew it was me._ An agony of guilt ripped through him. _That _thing_ must have looked like me at some point when it raped him. He must have thought that I had betrayed him—his own teammate and another exorcist!_ The pale teen could hardly begin to think that there was a deeper meaning in the incubus's choice of shape since it had also worn the form of Mr. Harrison, but even the odd, fluttering sensation that Allen felt briefly was soon crushed under the weight of remorse and anger.

"That was the last time I faced the incubus directly, but in the short span of time I engaged in open battle with it, one thing became abundantly clear: to fight the beast, you must empty yourself of everything that stirs any feeling and do battle with the same cold calculation as a machine. It can be trapped, if your will is strong enough, by creating a wall of void about it, a place of where it has nothing on which to feed because not only are emotions its sustenance, they are also the medium in which it exists. This is what I have done here, on this estate; the boundaries of my land are marked by two walls: the first is the physical wall which you have seen, the second is the curtain of nothing I have stretched out and maintain. It has now weakened and is failing. There is no other explanation for the attacks that have occurred outside of this estate. It must have found weak points and battered through them in search for new sources of energy, escaping from the lands in which I have held it captive for half a century."

"If you knew how to fight it, old man," Kanda snarled, "why haven't you killed it? Only a fool would keep something like that locked up for fifty years without doing something about it."

Nigel inclined his head and responded, "And fool I am, and weak besides. I have never been able to strike down the incubus, though I have had many opportunities. For that sin, I have seen my wife slain by madness and my house plagued by ruin and despair. My only comfort is that the incubus's last outright murder was the slaughter of Jennings: I felt that it was somehow just that he died by the hand of the beast he had summoned and rutted with. But my offence against the beast is imperfect as well, and each time I confronted it, Evangeline would appear before me and I would waver. I do not have the strength within me to attack even the illusion of my precious things; I can only defend. And now, I can hardly do even that."

"And why is that?" Kanda's voice was dangerous now, his hand clenched around Mugen's hilt in a white-knucked grip, his eyes intense and narrow and fixed on the old man.

"Because I am afraid!" Nigel's words came out in a scream, then the gentleman slumped brokenly and started to weep softly. "I am old and I am dying, but I have no one to pass my burden on to, no one will be left to protect this land and the village when I am dead. And yet I cannot kill the beast. I am shamed by my weakness and my shame weakens me more, feeds the beast more. It has grown strong on my despair these last few years, and I cannot hold it back any longer. I am breaking down my own defenses…" his words were lost in sobs and gloom seemed to gather about him. Lane, who had been sitting quietly and almost-forgotten, sprang to his master's aid, reaching out to grasp the old man's shoulders, but no sooner than he had touched the shaking gentleman, the servant screamed and dropped to the floor in flames. Lilith's shrieked and grabbed up a pitcher of water, splashing it across her fellow servant and the room erupted in chaos. Samuel and Allen shouted in consternation, casting about for the enemy, certain that the incubus must be lurking nearby, but it was Kanda who stepped up to the old man.

Nigel looked into Kanda's eyes and in those tortured depths, Kanda saw the faint shimmer of sickly pink power.

"Old man, it has possessed you," the swordsman said softly, in tones that were gentle by his standards, too low to be heard by anyone else but the elderly gentleman in the uproar as, behind the swordsman, Lilith, Allen, and Samuel strove to put out the flames that danced merrily over Lane's body. The servant was still screaming, even as the room filled with thick, greasy smoke and the stench of burned flesh. "It uses you to break its bonds. You will be its bridge into this world, as your wife was before."

"I know," Nigel whispered back. "I cannot fight any longer. I cannot trap it within me any longer. Please…please…end this." The proud man was pleading through the tears that poured down his face, agony in every line of his wrinkled cheeks. His hands shook. "I…I am sorry…" His old body jerked suddenly, and there was a loud _whumph!_ as Lane was consumed by a white-hot pillar of flame. His screams stopped abruptly as the choking smoke curled through the room, stinging eyes and lungs. And in Mr. Harrison's eyes, Kanda saw only pink malice and the reflection of flames.

"You have lost, old man." Kanda said calmly as the gentleman's old flesh began to crackle and peel away, revealing fresh, young skin beneath. The white hair was growing and giving way to a luxurious red and the man's body began to grin, his lips stretching into a vicious smile under his violently pink eyes. The Japanese exorcist drew Mugen unhurriedly and activated it, his eyes still locked onto the beast's. "Go, and find your peace."

Mugen sliced through the air in a beautiful, deadly arc. Mr. Harrison's head toppled to the ground and the torso to which it had so recently been attached followed it. Lilith howled and threw herself against Kanda's back, pounding on his shoulders with her fists, and Allen and Samuel both appeared before Kanda, screaming and spitting remonstrations. Kanda remained impassive and pointed with Mugen's tip to the body of Nigel Harrison with one word: "look."

Arcs of magenta lightning hurtled upward from the dead man's body and lit the smoke of Lane's pyre with an eldritch glow. A figure coalesced, standing above Nigel's fallen body. It laughed and swept open its great feathered wings. The smoke billowed aside momentarily and the three who had been berating Kanda choked into silence.

"Well, well," laughed the incubus, tossing his long, red tresses back from where they were caught on delicate, pale-gold horns with a jerk of his head. His smile revealed even white teeth and long, curving fangs. "Now wasn't that fun?"

* * *

Author's note: Hello, all! Happy Valentine's and New Year's Day! If you actually made it to the end of this rather long chapter, I offer you my congratulations and my sincerest thanks. I would also like to express my appreciation to all of you who encouraged me to keep going. I have always intended to finish this story, and I will, but it was very difficult for me to find the motivation it takes to write when no new chapters of D. Gray-Man have been forthcoming in so long (and even now that its back...). I can't write D. Gray-Man stories without regular doses of Kanda! Anyway, I hope this chapter will somewhat make up for the long wait. It's not my favorite chapter, though I do like parts of it. I also really hate some parts, but couldn't think of a better way of presenting the necessary information. If something doesn't make sense, just ask. You all are welcome to tell me what you though as well; I would be happy to read your comments and criticism. Thank you for sticking with me for this long! –Ibrium


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven:

* * *

_Arcs of magenta lightning hurtled upward from the dead man's body and lit the smoke of Lane's pyre with an eldritch glow. A figure coalesced, standing above Nigel's fallen corpse. It laughed and swept open its great feathered wings. The smoke billowed aside momentarily and the three who had been berating Kanda choked into silence._

"_Well, well," laughed the incubus, tossing his long, red tresses back from where they were caught on delicate, pale-gold horns with a jerk of his head. His smile revealed even white teeth and long, curving fangs. "Now wasn't that fun?"_

_

* * *

_

Allen and Samuel stared, stupefied, while the smoke displaced by the creature's wings swirled back into the cleared air, making the thing's figure indistinct once more. Somewhere behind them, Lilith was far removed from her usual level-headed self. She had collapsed to the floor, weeping and shrieking intermittently. Kanda alone seemed unaffected and unsurprised. His lips curled into a snarl and he leapt forward, Mugen already slicing through the haze to strike at the demon. The Japanese exorcist's movement was incredibly fast as he drew on his engineered strength to extend himself far beyond normal human capacity. The shining Innocence blade sped unerringly toward its target and cut brutally into…nothing.

Kanda's deep blue eyes widened marginally and the black-haired man was already turning when the incubus reappeared in the center of the little triangle formed by the Black Order trio. The swordsman ground his teeth and willed himself to turn faster, reaching with Mugen while every muscle and tendon in his body screamed with the effort, but the monster was a blur; clawed hands slammed into Kanda's shoulder and upper chest, the sharp talons ripping through the thick terrycloth robe and the tattered exorcist's uniform underneath to rend already-bruised flesh, and the Japanese man was hurled backward through the air to slam into the wood-paneled wall of the dining room with enough force to cause the wall to explode out into the parlor behind it. The loud, sickly crunch of Kanda's skull shattering on impact made Allen's stomach churn and the black-haired man crumpled to the floor like a broken doll. His blood started to seep into the beautiful Persian rug, dying even the rich crimson an even darker red.

The incubus spread its wings wide, the tips of its pinions easily brushing the walls on either side of the dining room. Allen flinched as the white feathers brushed against him, then flinched again when his gaze locked with that of the incubus. Gray eyes stared into piercing gold. The creature's pupils contracted as it focused its attention on the pale exorcist and Allen's dimly registered the odd, rectangular, goat-like shape, even as an odd fog robbed his mind of all acuity. The creature's perfect lips parted in a seductive smile and it smiled down at the shorter teen benevolently.

"Why do you look at me with such hate?" it breathed in a voice golden and liquid as honey. "Never have you come to any harm by my hand."

Allen ripped his gaze away and lashed out with his black-clawed hand, thankful that Crown Clown had never deactivated. He was rewarded by a stinging blow to the side of his head from one of the incubus's great wings as the creature flowed away from the strike. Allen's eyes watered from the force of the blow and he staggered slightly as he tried to rotate and continue facing the beast. It stepped lightly over to where Lilith half-sat, half-knelt beside the charred mark on the floor that was all that remained of Lane besides the greasy smoke. She flinched when the thing's glorious wings settled onto her shoulders, wrapping her in a cocoon of white down.

"And you, lady." The English exorcist found his mind wandering again at the sound of that perfect voice. "So sad, so pitiful. Tell me what troubles you, and I will ease your pain."

Lilith turned her tear-streaked face up toward the incubus, hope lending her tired face more beauty than Allen had ever seen in her before. She reached up with one shaky hand to grasp the creature's forearm, then bowed her head in petition.

"Please," she whispered, "please bring them back…please…"

The incubus leaned over her as though straining to hear her soft words better, an expression of satisfaction on its face. One clawed hand was lifted to rest gently on Lilith's hair and it spoke again: "I will return them to you soon, little one, but in return you must render me assistance in a small task—ah!"

The golden voice was cut off abruptly in a sharp bark of surprise and the incubus looked down at its own belly in seeming amazement. Protruding from the sleek, muscular torso was the hilt of one of the bread knives that had so recently seen service at the breakfast table. Lilith's strong hands were wrapped around the hilt and she jerked the handle down sharply, driving the serrated blade more deeply under the thing's ribs and deep into its vital organs. Whatever spell the creature's voice had wrought to hold Samuel and Allen in thrall was broken and the two men let out a shout and began to rush forward—just as it began to laugh, a deep peal like bronze bells that rumbled from its throat, even as a trickle of scarlet ran down from its already-red lips.

"That, little one," it said when it had calmed from its hilarity somewhat, "was unnecessary." It plucked the knife from its own flesh and held it up to the light to examine it. Gore still caked the edge, catching in the little saw teeth designed to bite into a loaf. "I wonder," came the words in a musing tone, "what would happen if…" Allen darted forward as it trailed off, but it was too late; the creature grabbed Lilith roughly by her hair and dragged her away while bringing the knife down with the other hand to stab through the back of the hand that still clutched its arm. Lilith screamed loudly and shrilly, her voice breaking on the highest notes. It began to saw at her flesh, never removing the blade and cutting through the bones in her hand and wrist until the blade sliced into the space between her radius and ulna and leapt forward at the sudden lack of resistance. The serrated edge buried itself in the inside surface of her radius and the blade twisted under the force of the incubus's strength until the steel snapped, leaving the blade trapped in her arm and the hilt in the thing's hand. Lilith crumpled to the ground, the fingers of her unwounded hand groping at the broken steel that jutted from her skin, mouth open in a silent howl of agony.

Allen's rush forward finally carried him into range—his charge across the room had been too slow to prevent the incubus's violent act—and he reached forward with both claws. He managed to snatch a handful of feathers from the trailing edge of one wing as the beast leapt away again, taking Lilith with it. It landed gracefully despite its human burden in the parlor, not far from where Kanda's body lay sprawled out in a pool of blood. Its golden eyes bored into Allen as it lifted Lilith off the floor by her hair with one hand.

"Stand and watch," it hissed, its tone no longer the wheedling and friendly. The force of the command rocked the pale exorcist back onto his heels and Samuel, who had only just begun to recover from the trap of its voice, stood rigidly upright with his brown eyes fixed helplessly on the creature and its victim.

Claws the color of ivory traced across Lilith's jaw and cheek, smearing her tears, then dug into her cheek. The incubus pulled slowly, painstakingly tearing a ragged patch of flesh from the servant's face before dropping it to the carpeted floor. Lilith's eyes rolled madly in their sockets until the claws were lifted back to her face, where it plucked out the fragile orbs in the same way one might pluck grapes. Lilith was gurgling, her hands fluttering blindly in front of her face as she felt the damage. The incubus threw her down contemptuously, ripping loose a thick hank of her hair. In his frozen state, held captive by the creature's despicable power, Allen could only watch with gut-wrenching horror as the beast lifted one taloned foot and stepped on the maid's jaw, applying pressure until, with a sickening crack, the bones gave way and the lower half of her ruined face collapsed.

The incubus still stared into Allen's face, clearly enjoying what it saw there. "Give me your rage, your hate, your suffering," it sighed out in pleasure. "I will take it and grow stronger. Your weakness and affections betray you, and by her death and your pain, I will become more powerful yet. Tell me, what should I do next?" It raised its foot again, this time placing it on Lilith's heaving ribcage. It began to press down with greater and greater force as it continued: "Shall I kill that man with you, the one in white? Or should I tear apart the body of the black-haired one? Though," it added, flashing a cruel smile, "it would be such a pity to ruin something I took so much pleasure in."

Anger deep enough to swallow the world overcame Allen and, with an inhuman shriek of bestial rage, the pale exorcist shattered the enchantment that bound him and sprinted for the incubus. It merely snorted at him scornfully and made as if to stomp down. Allen watched as Lilith's ribs began to bow as the stomp connected and willed himself to move faster, the room already blurring past—and then the parlor was suddenly full of hellish insects, which swarmed around the incubus, piercing with their needle-like noses and dragging out shimmering strands of _something_.

The beast howled in shock and unfamiliar pain, then vanished in a blaze of pink-tinged radiance, leaving behind the scent of burning and blood. In the midst of the wreckage of the wall, Kanda sat up slowly, Mugen in one hand and hair clotted with blood. Allen's boots slipped in the slick of blood on the floor where he had lain and the pale exorcist plowed into the carpet, managing to direct his fall so that he ended up sprawled next to Lilith.

"Oh God, oh God," he whispered repeatedly, reaching out touch her uninjured hand. She latched onto his fingers with incredible strength, grinding the bones together, and a bubbling whistle came from the mangled remains of her face. Ha felt Samuel and Kanda's presences just behind him—the Finder had been released from the spell with the disappearance of the incubus—and the Japanese man lifted Mugen, his intentions obvious even to Allen's grief-numbed mind.

"Kanda! No!" he screamed, grabbing the hand that held Mugen in his Innocence claws.

Stormy blue eyes glared back at him and Kanda shook him off with a strength that was frightening from one so recently dead. "She is already dying; would you let her suffer more?"

Allen opened his mouth to protest, to argue for a doctor, to call for a miracle, but a trembling hand clutched at the terrycloth robe that Allen wore. Lilith stared up at him with her empty sockets and shook her head slowly. A line of bloody saliva drooled from her crushed mouth. The Englishman fell silent and watched as Kanda angled Mugen and drove the sword under what remained of the servant's chin to pierce her brain. The swordsman pulled the blade free, giving it a swift pull downward to sever her spine as well. Lilith's hand dropped from Allen's robe, leaving behind only a smudge of red.

There was a long silence, pregnant with things left unsaid and weighed with sorrow and regret, then Samuel spoke, his voice—to his credit—wavering only slightly.

"So what do we do now?"

Kanda gazed at him, his face expressionless, then slid deactivated Mugen and stuck the Innocence sword back into the sash of his torn bathrobe. "Now we kill it," was all he said, and the Japanese exorcist turned and began to walk away, Samuel drifting after him. Allen rose to follow them, but paused when the portrait over the mantelpiece caught his eye again. Evangeline Graciér smiled down at him in all her beauty, but now there was an uneasy edge to the set of her lips and a hint of fear in the wideness of her eyes that he had not seen before. His attention was brought back to the immediate situation when Kanda's voice, flat and hard, snapped out at him.

"Oy, Bean Sprout. If you ever get out of my sight, I'll kill you the next time I see you. That thing can hide anywhere. That goes for you, too, Finder."

And the dark-maned man set off through the halls, retracing the path he and Allen had taken earlier that day. At first Allen was impressed by Kanda's apparent tracking skill, but after a few moments and a good look at the floor, he realized that the older exorcist was simply following the bloody trail they had left on their first pass. It was a little disturbing to know that it was his blood that he was following, but the crazy rush of adrenaline that had surged through his system when the incubus appeared was fading fast and leaving behind a desperate exhaustion. He supposed that was why this fucked-up little Hansel and Gretel path started to seem far more amusing than is should have.

He was stumbling by the time the ragged trio managed to climb the stairs and go down the hall the Allen's room. Kanda shoved the door open and moved immediately to the small suitcase that was shoved half-under the bed—his bag had been moved into Allen's room once Kanda had decided to take up residence there. Samuel stared fixedly at the huge pool of blood on the floor, now dry, where Kanda had stabbed the younger exorcist earlier that morning.

Allen stood next to the Finder, head down and mind wandering as he struggled to recall all of the nuances of the old fairy tale—though for the life of him he couldn't remember why it was suddenly so important that he do so. Kanda had shed the blood-soiled bathrobe and the tattered remains of his Exorcist's uniform and was pulling on a pair of his too-tight black pants like the ones that Allen had been so fascinated by on the train. Allen's stared vacantly at his back, soon covered by a white shirt and a black jacket twin to the one so recently ruined. Kanda turned to face his two companions as he settled Mugen on his hip in its typical spot, properly sheathed now that the Japanese exorcist had retrieved the scabbard from wherever it had fallen that morning.

"We have to try to draw it out of wherever it's hiding and get it in the open. It's fast, but enclosed spaces will only slow us down and give it an advantage. The courtyard out front should give us enough room to work. Finder, set up a barrier as soon as it appears. Bean Sprout, use your cannon arm to make sure it doesn't get behind him." Kanda's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Are you listening, Bean Sprout?"

Allen jerked upright from his slumped position and glanced at the Japanese sword wielder with wide eyes. "Push it in the oven!" He blurted frantically.

Silence. Samuel and Kanda stared at the cursed teen with dubious expressions. Allen realized what he had said and started to blush, the blood rising to his face in a tidal wave and making the rest of his body feel weak.

"Hansel and Gretel?" The Finder asked slowly after a while. "I suppose the incubus is like an evil witch."

"Hn," Kanda grunted. "So you were listening. Trap it and kill it."

Allen breathed a sigh of relief. He could hardly believe his luck that his woolgathering had been mistaken for a metaphor for Kanda's plan. _Thank God Kanda's plans were usually along the same line—corner it like a rat and kill it—because otherwise I would have no idea what was going on_, Allen thought gratefully. He was having a hard time focusing even now and he wanted nothing more than to fall asleep. His limbs were heavy, too, and he wasn't sure that he had enough energy to use Crown Clown with even a fraction of his normal capacity, especially since he was pretty sure that it was the only thing keeping him alive and he was running out of reserves to tap.

"Right," he said dully, "we'll start first thing tomorrow."

"We'll start right now," Kanda snapped aggressively.

Somewhere in the depths of his soul, Allen found enough energy to be angry. "Are you stupid? Do you honestly think that we are in any condition to fight?" His waving hand encompassed both Samuel and himself. "I bled out all over the floor this morning thanks to you and, unlike you, I don't freakishly regenerate all the time. I die, and Samuel does, too. So if you are going to risk our lives with your stupid plan, then at least let us sleep so that we have even a little chance of coming out of it alive! And if you don't want to wait, do it yourself! You seemed to have handled it just fine these last few days!"

Allen knew as soon as the last few words left his mouth that he had gone too far, but it was too late to take them back. Kanda swayed as if the younger man had physically struck him and he paled under his bronzed skin. The pale teen was torn between apologizing and saying more, but it didn't seem fair to any of them either way, so he held his tongue. A muscle in Kanda's jaw tightened and the swordsman's fingers clenched around Mugen's hilt, but the Japanese man said nothing. Allen felt a little ill; much as Kanda could be an inhuman ass, he didn't need to have the abuse heaped upon him by the incubus to be thrown back into his face. The Finder watched them carefully, ready to step between them if the worst should happen and it came to blows. Samuel knew that he didn't have much chance of stopping them if it should they really began to fight in earnest, but he also knew that he had no chance of matching the incubus's power without an Innocence weapon of his own. He needed the exorcists.

"Kanda-san," Samuel said carefully, "I think that Allen has a point. Allen certainly is not in the best shape for fighting and I'm not in very good shape myself. I've never seen someone torn apart like that right in front of me. It's still pretty early in the day, but I really think that we would all be better off if we waited until morning. I'll admit that it's risky to spend the night here, but our only other option is to leave the grounds altogether, and I don't know what that would do to Mr. Harrison's wards."

That got the exorcist's attention.

"I thought that Mr. Harrison's barrier broke when he died," Allen said confusedly. Kanda nodded once to concur with the sentiment.

"I don't quite understand it either," the Finder replied, "but my golem is still sensing a barrier of the same sort around the grounds."

"Ah!" Allen cried out, his memory suddenly triggered. "Timcampy!" He staggered across the room, looking for the familiar golden orb of his golem. "Timcampy!" he called again, hoping that the metal creature would respond to its name as usual.

Kanda drifted over to the bed, his eyes glazed and his face impassive. "He's here," the exorcist said in a hollow voice, pulling a small box out from between the mattress and the box spring near the head of the bed. He opened it and the small golden golem fluttered out, looking decidedly crumpled. It flew immediately over to Allen, where it settled onto his white hair.

The pale exorcist and the Finder said nothing, but Kanda answered the unspoken question anyway. "Nobody will come to help if they don't get the message, will they?"

Allen changed the subject quickly. "So the golems can sense the barrier Mr. Harrison set up? Can Tim sense it, too?"

"I presume so," Samuel responded.

"He can sense the thing, too," Kanda interjected, his voice flat and carefully neutral. "He always started acting differently when it…appeared."

"That's useful," Allen jumped in hurriedly. "It makes going to sleep a little less risky, since Tim can just wake us up before it gets here and starts attacking. It won't be able to sneak up on us." Samuel agreed with him, then they both turned to Kanda. The swordsman's face was haunted.

"Fine." Kanda's tone was dead and removed; Allen could see just how much the concession had cost him. It was not in the swordsman's nature to spare himself from hardship and this little nap that the younger exorcist so craved would almost certainly fall into the category of luxury in the Japanese man's mind. The pale teen kept on grey eye on Kanda as he began to settle himself on the floor near the wall to rest. The sudden twitch of a muscle in Kanda's jaw and the narrowing of dark blue eyes was the only warning Allen got before Kanda's burst out in tense, agitated anger.

"Not here!"

Allen and Samuel went still in the middle of stretching out on the floor, glancing at each other from the corners of their eyes. And that was when Allen realized that perhaps Kanda's reluctance had less to with not wanting to rest after their rather one-sided fight with the incubus and more to do with the locale. His grey eyes strayed over to the bed, still rumpled and stained with blood from the most recent attack on Kanda, then down to the thick crust of clotted blood on the floor.

"Ah," the younger exorcist said slowly, "we should move next door anyway, since…" he trailed off when he couldn't come up with a reasonable excuse for the move. Kanda's eyes narrowed and Allen winced; he had made his concession to Kanda's emotional trauma too obvious for the swordsman's taste. Allen supposed that it made sense. The Japanese man had been stripped of so much else that what little pride remained was precious.

And so it was a subdued trio that limped next door and curled up on the floor under blankets scrounged out of the linen closet. A small heap of clothing was tossed down in front of the pale-haired teen. Kanda had grabbed a change of clothes for Allen on the way out. The pale exorcist was too grateful for words for the clean fabric and the chance to get out of his soiled bathrobe. He didn't even have the energy to scare up a blush when he shed the bathrobe in front of his two companions. He moved methodically as he dressed, focusing on each button with the care normally reserved for extremely delicate tasks and having a hard time not catching himself in the zipper on the pants. It seemed odd to him that Kanda had brought him clothes but hadn't thought to provide any underwear, but that little mystery was quickly explained when Allen pulled on the exorcist coat. The swath of black fabric fell to brush just above his ankles: Kanda had given him one of his coats. And it had already been established that night on the train—it seemed so long ago—that Kanda eschewed undergarments. The pants he was now wearing were a little tight, too, and Allen spared a moment to be grateful that his thighs were slightly less muscular than the swordsman's, otherwise he doubted he could have slid into the slim-cut leather. Kanda had given him one of his own uniforms. Samuel opened his mouth to make a comment, changed his mind, and closed it again. Kanda was already asleep, or at least had his eyes closed and was pretending that he was. Allen wasn't going to risk wounding any of the older exorcist's odd emotions either way, so he thanked the black-haired man before he, too, laid down and closed his eyes. He didn't even have to pretend indifference or disinterest because he was asleep almost immediately.

His dreams were dark and muddled, half-glimpsed images and distorted vistas filled his mind, making him stir uneasily in his sleep. He dreamed of falling, of burning, of fleeing endlessly from something unseen. And so it came as a relief when he felt strong hands gripping his shoulders, shaking him awake, and heard a familiar, concerned voice calling his name.

"Allen! Allen, wake up already!" A hot sting spread across Allen's left cheek when whoever it was calling for him, apparently deciding more drastic measures were necessary to pull him from his distressed rest, slapped him sharply. The pale exorcist groaned in relief as his mind recoiled from his dreams and his grey eyes fluttered open. The first thing he saw was red hair and he acted on reflex. His left hand balled into a fist under its protecting glove and he punched right into the center of the pale blob framed by the scarlet. There was a muffled curse and the sound of something heavy hitting the floor; the weight that he hadn't even realized was crouching over him vanished.

Allen blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings. A large room swam into view, completely cluttered with books and papers and strange artifacts and carelessly abandoned clothing. A tan hand appeared, clutching the silk coverlet, which was a rather shocking shade of orange. A face followed the hand as the owner of both appendages crawled back into view and onto the bed.

"Damn," Lavi hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose between the thumb and pointer finger of his other hand. "I think my nose is bleeding." He removed his hand and a thin trickle of scarlet fluid ran down onto the hammer-wielder's lips. He stuck out his pink tongue to taste the liquid and grimaced at the tangy iron flavor. "I _am_ bleeding. That must have been some dream for you to punch me like that. You are aware that I am now going to use your guilt for injuring this beautiful face to manipulate you shamelessly, aren't you?"

Allen was nonplussed. He sat there stupidly, staring at the one-eyed exorcist with a blank face while he tried to figure out exactly what was happening. Lavi noticed the empty gaze—he would, he was the Bookman's apprentice after all and the Panda would kick him into next week if he couldn't pick up on something so obvious—and waved a hand in front of Allen's face until those grey eyes focused.

"Are you all right?" the hammer-wielder asked when he was finally sure that Allen was actually paying attention.

Allen gave him an odd look, then reached out and poked the other man firmly between the eyes, just below his headband. "You're solid," the younger boy said wonderingly.

"O-kay," Lavi stretched the word out disbelievingly. "I'm the one who got hit in the head, you know. It shouldn't be you who's so confused right now."

"No, no." Allen drew his knees up to his chest, forgetting that he was still wearing the muddy boots he had been so worried about putting on Lavi's bed when the redhead insisted that he sit down. Lavi sighed at the enormous streaks of dirt and dust that now stained his bedding, but didn't say anything. After all, he was the one who had tossed Allen onto the bed and so he now had no room to complain. He was so distracted by the destruction of his coverlet that he almost missed Allen's next words.

"I went on the mission with Kanda. There was a huge mansion, and an old man who turned out to be trying to keep an incubus trapped. The incubus killed everyone—well, everyone except us, that is, and technically Kanda killed two of them, but that was to end their suffering—and we were going to fight it, but we had to sleep first because Kanda—ah!" Allen cut himself off in mid-thought with a loud gasp and his hands flew to his chest. His black and white uniform was still pristine, its cut and style familiar. Disbelievingly, he pulled the fabric over his chest open, tearing off one of the silver buttons in the process. With shaking fingers he touched the pale, unblemished skin over his heart that had so recently been nothing more than a gaping hole sealed only by the power of his own Innocence.

"Kanda stabbed me. He stabbed me right here." Allen's voice was low and intense, wanting—_needing—_the other exorcist to believe him. "I was wearing his uniform when I fell asleep, and the three of us were together in a room. Timcampy was guarding us because it could sense the incubus, but…Don't you believe me?" His last words were spoken as a plea, his hands reaching out to take Lavi's in a tight grip. The Bookman was looking at him with a mixture of surprise and worry and, so faint that Allen almost didn't recognize it, pity.

Lavi sighed and gently shifted their hands so that he could cradle Allen's between his own. He looked down at their entwined fingers for several moments, considering his next words. Then he looked up and his one teal eye met and held Allen's grey gaze.

"Allen," the redhead said softly, his thumbs rubbing soothing circles on the backs of Allen's hands. "You haven't left for your mission yet. You met with Komui this afternoon after Kanda and I had a falling out. You two were going to leave later—you said something about packing—and then you showed up here with Timcampy in tow. We talked about Kanda for a while, then you fell asleep. You were muttering something about boxers in your sleep for a bit—I didn't know that people could blush when they weren't awake—and then you were quiet until just a little while ago. You started thrashing around like you were having a nightmare, so I woke you up. You know the rest."

"You're saying that it was a dream?" Allen was stunned.

Lavi's expression was compassionate and concerned. "It must have been: you haven't left for your mission yet. But, you know Allen, I really think that it might be better if you stayed here and let someone else take this mission. Komui would agree with me, I'm sure, since you are having such disturbing dreams. You can't go out if you are having visions strong enough to distort your reality."

Allen shook his head slowly in negation. "I need to go on this mission, Lavi."

"I'm afraid not," Lavi said with a bit more force. "I can't let you risk yourself and Kanda because your health is compromised. I'm sorry." Having said that, the hammer-wielder beckoned and a black golem emerged from the shadows near the roof of the tall room. "Relay to Komui that Allen is having problems sleeping and had a dream powerful enough to rattle him pretty badly. I think that it would be safest if he got a break for a while; you've been running him ragged recently, Komui."

There was a crackle of static as the golem passed along Lavi's words, then Komui's voice spilled from between the golem's metal teeth.

"Allen, I need you to come down to the infirmary to get a check-up. I am going to reassign this mission to someone else in the meantime. I want you to have enough time to rest and get yourself sorted out before you go out again. I'll call Kanda and tell him that we're going to put someone else on the mission with him. Noise Marie might be a good choice—"

"NO!"

Allen's scream cut through the quiet room like lightning through an old oak. Lavi flinched in surprised and turned wide-eyes to the pale exorcist.

"Are you okay?" the redhead asked again, taking in Allen's panting breaths and strained expression. The poor boy looked like he had just run a marathon the way he was gasping for air.

"Allen?" Komui, too, sounded worried.

"No," Allen said again, quieter but with no less desperate intensity. "No, Kanda can't go. He can't go on this mission. He just can't."

Komui sighed, sounding tired. "Allen, I assure you that Kanda will be fine. He'll have a partner and he is well able to take care of himself."

"No!" the pale exorcist's voice was cracking as if under terrible stress. "If he goes, he'll be hurt horribly. Please believe me, I know. I saw it. He can't go!"

There was momentary silence form both other men. Finally Komui sighed. "Would it put you more at ease if I were to assign this mission to another group entirely and Kanda stayed here in headquarters until you recover?"

Allen knew it was selfish to put someone else in danger in an attempt to keep Kanda safe, but after what he had seen, he didn't care. "Yes," the pale teen assured Komui.

"Then I'll recall Kanda; he's already headed for the boats. I believe his intention was to leave you behind. I want you to come down to the infirmary now. And I do mean now." The communication cut off as soon as Komui stopped speaking, a sure sign that the scientist had shifted his attention to Kanda. Lavi didn't envy the crazy director his conversation with the implacable swordsman.

Allen scooted to the end of the bed and set his booted feet on the floor. Lavi stopped him with a hand on his arm just before the shorter boy stood.

"Do you want me to walk you to the infirmary?" the eyepatched Bookman asked quietly. Allen just shook his head, rose, and walked across the sea of paperwork and fabric on the floor to the door. Timcampy fluttered up from behind one of the hideous figurines littering Lavi's desk and settled himself on top of Allen's snowy white hair. The cursed exorcist paused just after pushing the door open and touched his pocket with one hand. There was a soft bulge there, but before Lavi's curiosity could get the better of him and he could ask, Allen pulled a swatch of scarlet silk from the pocket and tossed it to land on the bed beside the hammer-wielder.

"I think these are yours," was all the younger exorcist said before leaving. The door swung shut behind him and Lavi scooped up the fabric interestedly. The next moment, the redhead was laughing, holding his own missing boxers at arm's length.

* * *

Author's note: Hey, guys. I just got back from a long, long, long trip with essentially no internet access, which delayed this post far longer than I had intended. I figured I had better post it today in honor of my birthday; I hope you enjoy it. Some of you may be suprised that I am still alive. However, I ask for your forbearance and I will reaffirm my promise to finish this story. Thank you to all of you who have stuck with me.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: Inside Out

* * *

"_Do you want me to walk you to the infirmary?" the eyepatched Bookman asked quietly. Allen just shook his head, rose, and walked across the sea of paperwork and fabric on the floor to the door. Timcampy fluttered up from behind one of the hideous figurines littering Lavi's desk and settled himself on top of Allen's snowy white hair. The cursed exorcist paused just after pushing the door open and touched his pocket with one hand. There was a soft bulge there, but before Lavi's curiosity could get the better of him and he could ask, Allen pulled a swatch of scarlet silk from the pocket and tossed it to land on the bed beside the hammer-wielder._

"_I think these are yours," was all the younger exorcist said before leaving. The door swung shut behind him and Lavi scooped up the fabric interestedly. The next moment, the redhead was laughing, holding his own missing boxers at arm's length._

* * *

Allen trailed through the halls behind Timcampy, who had flapped off of his head in order to lead him back to the main halls. They passed again through the enormous room dominated by the fireplace and the exorcist's pale grey eyes lingered on the runes carved there. One of them in particular had featured in his dream and he shivered at the memory of his visions, at the thought of Kanda abused and broken. Its illusion of continuity triggered a sort of sick nausea and he had to wrench his eyes away from the two conjoined bars to keep himself from emptying his stomach right there on the flagstone floor. The nausea subsided as he stepped into the narrow passage he had stumbled into—it seemed so long ago—and staggered past the torn webs toward the hall on the far side.

The familiar black-and-white tiled corridors were comforting as Allen began his descent down the staircases to the infirmary. Its repetitive monotony was soothing and his disordered thoughts began to subside, leaving behind a numb exhaustion. He was bone-weary after his nap and the resulting tumult of sentiment, which was why he didn't even flinch when Komui swooped down on him in the infirmary with a gleaming silver machine already strapped to his arm.

At Komui's bidding, the pale teen lay down on one of the exam tables and the Chief Scientist began attaching electrodes to his head in seemingly random patterns.

"Is this really necessary?" Allen asked the white-coated man doubtfully. He had too much experience with Komui's crazy experiments to not feel at least a little trepidation whenever Komui started working, but the older man just patted him firmly on the shoulder and continued sticking gummed, wired patches to his scalp.

"No, it's not _really_ necessary, but it won't hurt you and I really did want to try out my new electrodes. I designed them so I didn't have to shave off the hair before applying them. But I also want to talk to you while I'm doing this. It helps me get better data on your brain activity." There was an odd gleam in the scientists eyes that made Allen hesitate.

"I think that I just need to rest, Komui-san. Maybe we could do this later?" _So that I have time to escape_, he added mentally. Komui looked disappointed, but he agreed, taking in the wan face and dark-circled eyes of the young man who had become one of his favorite exorcists. While the scientist truly wanted to do nothing other than grill him mercilessly about his hallucinations—and they must have been impressive if even Lavi had felt the need to breach another's privacy to report them—the poor boy really looked as though he might just drop over right there on the exam table. It was unfortunately true in this case that deep sleep would probably be the best thing for the young exorcist, much as he would have enjoyed testing his latest inventions on a helpless vict—patient, he reminded himself firmly, patient. It didn't stop him from pulling the electrodes off with more force than was strictly necessary, however. Allen was sure that he lost some skin and hair to the sudden departure of the gummy patches. Still sulking, Komui administered a mild sedative to help the pale teen achieve dreamless sleep, then departed.

Allen settled back on the table, more of a bed now that Komui had supplied him with a pillow and a pair of blankets and that the battery of operating lamps had been moved from directly over his head, and allowed his mind to drift. He had almost slipped into a light doze when the door of the infirmary room slammed open with enough force to rattle the equipment and make the solid oak of the door rebound from the wall. A livid Kanda stormed in, his eyes nearly glowing with rage, and Allen was suddenly very much awake. _Uh, oh,_ whispered the little voice in Allen's mind.

"You got me _recalled_ from a _mission_," the black-haired exorcist hissed, his blue eyes seething with fury. Allen gulped and pulled the blankets up to his chin protectively.

"I'm sick," he offered, hoping to appease the Japanese sword-wielder's legendary temper. No such luck. Kanda simply grabbed the front of Allen's uniform and hauled him into a seated position on the bed, leaning in close enough to snarl in Allen's face: "I could have gone alone; you would only slow me down anyway. And if Komui insisted on sending some other useless baggage with me, there must be half-a-dozen other exorcists sitting around cooling their heels in this place. Any one of them could go in your place. And now two of them have taken _my _mission. And you know what else? I heard that you specifically asked that I not be allowed to go, Bean Sprout."

The Japanese man's voice had lowered to a furious growl by the end of his complaint. He looked like he might start spitting nails at any moment if the way his hands kept twitching toward Mugen's hilt was any indication. Allen silently offered up a prayer that his plea to Komui hadn't saved one exorcist's life at the cost of another's. It hadn't been in his plans today to get hacked into little pieces by a socially-stunted madman. Another growl cut off his introspection and the pale teen realized that he had inadvertently ignored the black-haired man snarling in his face. _It just happens so often…_Allen sighed mentally.

The cursed exorcist slumped down into his pillows and picked at his cover petulantly. "I thought it would be best," he muttered, not meeting the burning cobalt gaze.

Kanda sucked in a breath, his hands clenching at his sides so tightly that Allen could see the tendons stand out white against the ridges of his knuckles.

"And it never occurred to you," the sword-wielder said, sounding calm except for the slight tremble in his voice that told Allen that the other man was trying very hard to not simply reach out, grab him by the throat, and shake him until his neck snapped. "That I might not think that it would be best to trust the delusions of a clearly mentally-unstable child regarding my own competence?"

Allen gasped and jerked upright. Kanda might as well have just slapped him across the face; it would have had the same shocking effect and probably would have hurt less. Hard on the heels of the wave of pain that welled up from the pit of his stomach at Kanda's words came shuddering anger.

"This has nothing to do with your goddamn competence, Kanda!" The pale exorcist snapped. "I'm not so stupid to think that you can't take care of yourself, but I had hoped that _you_ wouldn't be so stupid as to not realize that sometimes there are things that even you can't fight!"

Kanda sneered at him, stung by the other's insult. "The only things I can't fight are in your fucked-up little head. Did the Fourteenth leave you some nightmares to keep you from realizing what you were?"

"That's not fair and you know it!" Allen hardly ever raised his voice, but the sedative had taken the edge off of his self-control and he was burning with a white-hot fury that the dark-haired man would stoop so low as to throw Allen's greatest shame and fear back into his face. He was shrieking like a child, but he couldn't find it in himself to stop.

"It's not fair to keep me trapped here in this fucking tower out of you own selfishness, either!" Kanda howled right back, leaning forward to slam his hands down on either side of Allen's legs, pinning him so that the younger teen had no choice but to look him straight in the eyes. Kanda wanted the other exorcist to see just how pissed he was at this violation of his will and so he waited, his anger simmering like boiling tar, black and thick and scorching.

Allen could feel Kanda's fury beating against him in palpable waves. It was like standing naked in the desert with the sun beating down on his unprotected flesh, blistering and uncaring and completely distant. And that was when he realized just why Kanda was so livid. Understanding washed over him, sweeping away his anger with the other man and leaving behind the first stirrings of horror.

"You trusted me." Allen stated softly, peering intently into Kanda's blue, blue eyes. He moved his hands to cover Kanda's where they rested on either side of his thighs.

Immediately, the passionate rage in Kanda's gaze was gone, hidden behind the cool, thick walls of impersonality and uncaring that the Japanese exorcist slammed down whenever anyone approached too close to his actual emotions. He made as if to pull away, but Allen tightened his grip on the swordsman's calloused hands to keep him in place. The pale teen knew full well that if Kanda really wanted to leave, he was more than capable of breaking his grip. To his surprise, Kanda allowed himself to be restrained.

The swordsman was staring into his eyes as though he could strip away the layers of Allen's soul and see everything that the pale boy was and ever had been. Allen shivered under that enigmatic perusal, and spoke again, feeling compelled by the strength of Kanda's searching stare.

"I just didn't want you to get hurt." It sounded kind of pathetic now that he had said it, but it rang of absolute truth. Allen still found himself trying not to blush.

"You're one to talk of trust when you didn't even trust me to take care of myself." Kanda was still angry, the sullen burn of resentment making itself known even from under Kanda's mask of icy detachment. "Some kind of trust you prattle on about if it only works one way." Allen winced, recognizing the truth in the accusation, but he still felt the slight glow of warmth that Kanda had acknowledged Allen's earlier assumption as reality, even if it was inadvertent. Suddenly it was even more important that Allen make the dark-haired man understand why Allen had done what he had.

"I do trust you." Allen was whispering intensely, desperately wishing for Kanda to see from his point of view. "I trust you absolutely. But I also think that everyone should have someone to look out for them. I wanted to do that for you, Kanda. I wanted to help you, but sometimes there are other reasons, too, and they are just so strong that I can't help but act. I mess up and piss you off and do stupid things, but I never, ever meant to hurt you. I never meant to make you feel like I didn't trust you. I just…I just…" Allen's eyes widened and he fell silent in shock.

_What the hell am I trying to say? _ He asked himself. _I've blabbed on about reasons and wanting to protect him but that seems so ridiculous. I mean, we aren't even really friends. _A vision of Kanda as Allen had seen him on the train ride—sprawled out with his white belt gripping the tops of his thighs like a lover—that the white-haired boy wasn't even sure was real floated to the forefront of his mind and instantly the blush he had managed to hold back was flooding his face with scarlet. _That isn't what a friend thinks._

The cursed exorcist was drawn back to reality by a soft puff of wind against his face. It smelled slightly of green tea and Allen realized that Kanda had sighed. Grey eyes flew up to search the taller man's face; they had dropped to his lap in shame when he had the sudden insight that his intentions toward the other may be less than pure. Kanda was staring down at him thoughtfully, but he didn't seem angry anymore. In fact he seemed more…amused…than anything else.

Allen pouted at him, hurt flashing in his grey eyes. "I meant it, you know?"

Kanda hn-ed then responded: "I know. It's been a long time since I've seen you have so much trouble saying something. It was nice to have a break from your inane rambling."

Allen stared at him as if he had grown a second head, and then removed one hand from Kanda's in order to pinch himself firmly on the thigh. Nothing changed, except that Kanda raised one cynical eyebrow.

"You made a joke," Allen explained, a little peeved at Kanda's supercilious look. "I figured I was dreaming."

Kanda laughed then. It was the first time in Allen's memory that he wasn't being mocking or sarcastic, and the low, amused chuckle triggered an odd, tingling feeling low in Allen's belly. It didn't help that Kanda hadn't backed away, so each syllable of his laugh send little breaths brushing along the pale boy's cheeks. A long-suppressed desire took the opportunity to surface in the dark corners of the younger teen's mind, nudging at his psyche and before he could stop himself, he acted on it. He could always blame Komui's soporifics of having some bizarre side-effect should the need arise.

Kanda's laugh was cut off abruptly when the cursed exorcist pressed his lips against the swordsman's in a clumsy kiss. It was brief and awkward, little more than a brush of the lips made uncomfortable by the fact that Allen's lunge forward had made their teeth collide almost painfully and their foreheads collide definitely painfully. Startlement made Kanda take a half-step back just as Allen sat back, his face on fire and his eyes lowered.

The pale teen swung his legs off the bed and was already making his escape toward the infirmary door when Kanda's hand clamped down on his wrist.

"Where are you going?"

Allen quailed at the question, spoken so flatly. He couldn't bring himself to turn back and face the swordsman, not after doing something so damn embarrassing. Not for the first time in Kanda's presence, Allen wished that the earth would open up beneath him and swallow him, never to be seen again.

"I'm sorry, I have to go!" he squeaked out, refusing to look back, not wanting to see the look of disgust and barely-suppressed anger he knew would be on Kanda's face.

"Haven't I always told you to finish what you start, Bean Sprout?" Kanda sounded exasperated. Allen blinked; that hadn't been what he had expected at all. He turned to see Kanda's face. He caught a glimpse of a wry smile, then the sword-wielder tugged on his wrist and Allen tumbled forward into the taller exorcist's arms where he was caught and held against a broad chest. The cursed teen yelped with surprised and jerked his face up to ask Kanda just what he thought he was doing. The words died on his tongue when Kanda bent his head down and kissed him.

Allen spared a few seconds to note that, once again, Kanda had proved himself to be better at something than Allen himself was. The next second, Allen's brain melted and he didn't care anymore, relinquishing all control to the older exorcist as strong lips dominated his and a clever tongue dipped into his mouth. Allen could feel his knees giving out and clung with desperate strength to the front of Kanda's uniform to hold himself upright; he couldn't bear the thought of breaking away. Kanda seemed to sense his sudden weakness because one strong hand slipped up from Allen's wrist to cup the back of Allen's head while the other pressed firmly into the shorter teen's lower back, crushing his slender body against the solid muscle of Kanda's belly.

Something hard pressed into the backs of Allen's thighs and, before the white-haired exorcist could scrape together enough brain cells that weren't currently completely frazzled by Kanda's persuasive assault on his lips to form a coherent thought, he found himself sprawled inelegantly on his own exam table. It wasn't comfortable; his shoulders were pressed down on the thin mattress while his lower spine was being ground into the metal edge on account of Kanda's weight bearing down on the smaller boy's hips. Kanda shifted and stepped closer, yanking on Allen's uniform jacket to hoist the smaller boy off the ground. Allen exclaimed in surprise, breaking the kiss, his hands slamming down behind him on the bed to try and maintain his balance. He found himself sitting on the edge of the bed.

Kanda quirked his lips, his kiss-bruised, reddened lips, into a half-smile. "Having trouble, Bean Sprout?"

Allen shook his head dumbly. White hair flopped into his eyes and he raised a hand to brush it away; Kanda beat him to it and the pale exorcist shivered as the sword calloused fingers ghosted across his brow.

"Speechless? That good?" Kanda laughed lowly. The sound of it throbbed in Allen's groin and the younger exorcist shifted uncomfortably.

"Please…" the pale teen whispered. He was blushing again. Kanda "hnn-ed" deep in his throat and kissed him again, long and lingering. Then Kanda shoved him down on the exam table again, all possessive male dominance, and the younger exorcist was dimly aware of the fact that Kanda had crawled up onto the thing next to him. The pale teen could feel the other man's scorching body heat clearly through his uniform. It both frightened and excited him to be so close to the one person he—respected? Cared for?—most in this world. Kanda's hands slid up over his sides as the sword wielder searched for and started to undo the buttons on Allen's uniform without breaking their kiss.

Hazily, Allen wondered how Kanda managed to move with such dexterity, since the cursed exorcist was having a hard time mustering up the coordination even to clutch at Kanda's shoulders. The thought vanished then the swordsman unhooked the last button and reached for the zipper holding Allen's jacket closed. With his teeth.

_Oh, my…_Allen breathed mentally, his grey eyes comically wide. Kanda noticed and smirked up at him from his current position halfway down Allen's belly, the zipper pull still held firmly between strong, white teeth. The pale exorcist could feel Kanda's breath against his stomach and he jumped in surprise when the dark-haired man's nose bumped against his navel while he tugged the zipper portion apart. Kanda chuckled again, low and deep, and Allen's toes curled.

Allen was astonished. When he imagined how Kanda might be between the sheets—which he _hadn't_, thank you very much, no matter how much his conscience cringed at the lie—he had never pictured the forbidding exorcist as one for foreplay. And yet here he was, his breath now puffing against Allen's too-tight pants as he jerked the zipper down the last half-inch, letting the pale teen's jacket fall open. The pale exorcist half-hoped that the other man might do the same with his shirt, though he wasn't sure how Kanda would manage the buttons with his teeth.

Allen glanced down at the man in question, who was currently straddling the younger man's legs, only to be met with an amused smirk. The younger man's breath hitched as Kanda hovered deliberately over the bulge in Allen's trousers, his blue eyes sparkling with satisfied cunning at Allen's helplessness before him.

The word "please" slipped past Allen's lips before he could bite it back. Embarrassment painted his already flushed cheeks redder. Kanda laughed huskily and rubbed two fingers over Allen's hip, brushing across the younger man's inner thigh and lower belly in the process. It was horribly, torturously pleasurable to have Kanda's fingers trailing over him, touching him everywhere except where he needed it most. And so Allen became proactive, grabbing Kanda's wrist and pushing the swordsman's palm down over his groin. He couldn't keep his hips from rolling up to meet that welcome pressure and friction.

Kanda growled like an animal and snatched control back from the other exorcist; Allen threw his head back and moaned as the swordsman's calloused hands dragged down the waistband of his pants, barely pausing to unzip them before sliding the fabric off the pale boy's hips and shoving it down to his knees, and wrapped themselves around his turgid length. His grip was firm and commanding, the roughened skin of his palms rubbing intriguingly over Allen's hyper-sensitized flesh. The grey-eyes exorcist groaned and shoved one fist against his mouth to stifle the sound as Kanda brushed a thumb playfully across the weeping slit at the tip of Allen's member. The white shirt clung to Allen's body, the sweat breaking out on his pale flesh turning the thin material translucent.

Allen's pale thighs were shaking; Kanda could feel the movement in his own flesh where the other man's legs were pressed against his own. His reaction pleased the swordsman, who rumbled deep in his chest like a pleased panther and lifted one hand from Allen's cock to brush white hair out of his partner's eyes. Allen gazed back at him through lust-glazed eyes, looking so tempting that Kanda couldn't help but to lean forward and claim those reddened lips once more, even as his other hand kept up its steady rhythm on Allen's length. The pale teen sobbed into his mouth, tangling his hands into the long, ebon strands of Kanda's now mostly-loose ponytail.

The Japanese exorcist pulled his mouth away after a few molten seconds and Allen sighed at its loss, though his exhalation was soon converted into a sort of breathy wail when those searing lips closed around the head of his cock.

_Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God_, Allen's mind squealed like a schoolgirl before even that though was banished as Kanda swallowed him down until Allen could feel himself pressed against the very back of the swordsman's throat. Allen choked out a cry and jerked himself up onto his elbows from his prone position so that he could stare down at the blue-eyed exorcist sucking him off. Kanda took in the sight of the pale exorcist's now-flushed face, to which sweat-dampened strands of silver-white hair clung. The cursed teen looked delightfully rumpled. Kanda hummed his approval around the column of flesh in his mouth, the vibrations travelling from his palate down Allen's length to buzz against the younger man's pelvis. Allen could feel something tightening in him like a spring wound more and more until it threatened to snap apart. He pulled urgently at Kanda's hair to get the other exorcist's attention.

"Kanda, I'm—ah!—I'm going to…" he could hardly bring himself to say it, his face flushing an even darker red. Kanda laughed softly at his and drew back so that he held only the very tip between his lips, then laved long swipes of his tongue along the underside, tracing the veins there.

Allen's back arched, every muscle drawing tight. "Kanda!" he cried out, "I'm going to cum!" _There, I said it!_ He whispered in his mind, expecting Kanda to draw back. But the swordsman just swallowed him again, his hand fondling the pale teen's balls, and Allen lost it. White flashed behind his eyes, blinding him, and the tight coil inside him flew apart. He shuddered at the strength of his release and tried to ride it out lest he drown in the force of it, collapsing back onto the exam table hard enough to shake the frame. Slowly his trembling subsided and the white faded back into color. Drained, he managed to pull himself up far enough to look down at the other man.

Kanda smirked back at him, his torso still draped across Allen's legs, bracing himself with one foot on the floor to keep himself on the narrow exam table that was serving as their bed. The swordsman's arms were wrapped around Allen's pale hips. Whitish fluid dribbled from the corner of the swordsman's mouth. Allen was mortified; Kanda just licked his lips, watching the way Allen's eyes followed the path of his pink tongue.

"Feel good?" Kanda asked, his usual velvet growl a little rougher. _Almost as though he had been poked in the back of the throat a few times with something_, Allen's mind added unnecessarily, adding to the pale teen's embarrassment even as he nodded a shaky affirmative to Kanda's question. He wasn't sure he could trust his voice right then._ I can't believe I just did that with Kanda_, the more rational part of Allen whimpered. _He can't be too happy that he just had to swallow a mouthful of—_

"Are you ready for more?" The swordsman continued and then, without even waiting for Allen's answer, he stuck two fingers into his own mouth and sucked, making a show of running his tongue around each of the digits. He withdrew them, wet and shining, from between his lips and, before Allen had time to even contemplate what he was going to do next, those slick fingers were pressing gently against his backside, stretching open the tight ring of muscle there.

"Holy shit!" Allen gasped, jerking away only to crash back down onto the table, his legs trapped at the knees by his own pants. And Kanda certainly didn't help his escape attempt as he crawled sensuously up over Allen's body, brushing kisses as he went, until the swordsman was supporting his weight on his knees on either side of Allen's hips and on one elbow, bent and pressed into the padding next to Allen's head. The other hand stayed on Allen's bottom, stroking the smooth skin there, though mercifully it drifted away from his entrance.

"I won't hurt you," Kanda promised, his dark blue eyes even more intense than usual as they bored into Allen's own. Allen writhed uncomfortably under the swordsman, not certain that he could bring himself to submit in such a way to the older exorcist, partially because, after living with Cross for so long and then fighting a war where all dignity and hope had been stripped away, Kanda was asking him to surrender up a large part of the last of his remaining innocence. But he also didn't want to turn the swordsman away when he was so ready to give Allen the relationship that the cursed teen had begun to crave so long ago. And then Kanda whispered the words that Allen couldn't bear to disappoint: "Trust me."

Kanda felt Allen's body slowly unwind underneath his own, each of the pale teen's taught muscles slowly unknotting and allowing the slight form to sink down onto the exam table. Allen's pale grey eyes were focused on his face, reflecting his determination and underlying worry. The swordsman's lips quirked affectionately and he bent his head to press kisses along the delicate flesh of Allen's throat even as he slipped a finger into Allen up to the first joint—barely there but enough to make Allen twist away in discomfort.

"Just relax," Kanda soothed him, stroking the sweating forehead of the other exorcist, tracing over the fine, scarlet lines around his left eye before nibbling at the corner of his mouth. Allen turned his head to deepen the kiss and wrapped his arms around the swordsman's broad shoulders, pulling the larger man down on top of himself. The pale exorcist groaned into the lip lock when Kanda sunk his finger deeper, stroking him inside to try and get him to relax. A second finger joined the first and brushed over something inside the smaller man. Allen jerked as though he had been electrified, a load moan spilling from his lips, and dug his blunt fingernails into Kanda's shoulders.

Kanda pulled back from Allen's embrace just enough to gaze down on the flushed face of the white-haired man as he searched inside him to relocate that spot. No sooner than he had rediscovered it, sending jolts of pleasure shooting up Allen's spine, the infirmary door burst open.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Kanda?" Komui howled. Allen's cry of pleasure turned to one of horror and the pale exorcist scrabbled at the blanket on the bed in an attempt to cover himself, knocking Kanda in the chin with one flailing elbow in the process. The blanket remained stubbornly trapped underneath the two bodies sprawled upon it, so Allen was forced to abandon his endeavor after a few split-seconds. He settled for jerking his shirt back down from where it had ridden up over his belly and pulling his jacket back closed over his thighs. Kanda's hand disappeared from his backside.

"He needs rest, not you bending him over the exam table!" Komui was hysterical. "Don't go taking your anti-social tendencies and bad mood out on my poor Allen!"

Kanda shot the babbling scientist a glare like the end of the world. It was deflected by the Chief's special glasses—or perhaps by his famous ability to see only his version of anything and everything—and Komui kept talking at full flow. The mood was beyond ruined. Allen's face sizzled with heat; Kanda just cursed under his breath and rolled off Allen and the exam table, dropping back to his feet with feline grace. The swordsman adjusted the white belt crossing over his hips significantly, holding Allen's gaze all the while, then strode for the door.

"Later, Bean Sprout," he said, tossing the words carelessly over one shoulder in a voice low and husky with frustration of more than one kind. "My room." Then he left, slamming the door closed behind him so hard that the overhead lights rattled.

"Oh, my poor Allen," the scientist gushed, rushing to Allen's side. The pale exorcist cringed away and pulled his jacket closed more tightly. "It must have been horrible. Kanda is just too aggressive for his own good. What an animal. Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," he mumbled, choking the words out through the embarrassed lump in his throat. Komui frowned at him and pushed his glasses back up his nose with two fingers, fixing a gimlet stare onto the blushing exorcist.

"Allen, I want you to know that if ever you feel threatened by Kanda or that you have to allow him certain…liberties because of something he has said, all you need to do is tell me and I will take care of it." Komui was being serious for once, and Allen was forcibly reminded of just why the man had managed to reach his position within the Order. Underneath the bubbling, scatter-brained mad-scientist persona was incredible intellect, compassion, and a strong sense of responsibility. "There is no reason for you to submit to his requests unless you _want_ to. Don't let him guilt you or manipulate you into this if you have doubts or fears."

"He wasn't doing anything unwanted to me," Allen replied, wondering if it was possible for him to melt his face off with the heat from his blush. Though he _was_ grateful to Komui for looking out for him. "I just…I just…"

"Wasn't ready?" Komui finished for him. "Then Kanda will just have to wait for you, won't he. In the mean time, that sedative I gave you should be making you really drowsy right about now." The manic gleam was suddenly rekindled behind Komui's glasses. "After all, I wouldn't want you to fall asleep halfway through your first time. So take a nice long nap, and if you do decide to meet Kanda later, don't forget these. I wouldn't want you to run out." So saying, the scientist slapped a box of condoms down on the table next to Allen's legs. Allen jumped.

"How did you know that I haven't…" the white-haired teen began.

Komui grinned sneakily. "I set up surveillance cameras in the infirmary a long time ago—a safety precaution, you know, to make sure that there was always an eye on the injured even when no one was in the room. Imagine my surprise when I got back to my office and took a peek to make sure you were settling in nicely for your nap. There's no audio—rather a pity, that—but I was just in time to see you start trying to get away from Kanda, you jumped like a virgin when he grabbed you, and I assumed the worst and came down to break it up. And now, if you don't need anything else, I have to find someone to order to clean up the coffee I sprayed all over my desk before it soaks in and ruins the paperwork."

Allen stared at him. Komui misinterpreted it: "I'll help," he added and marched out the door, possible violations of personal privacy via so-called "security" cameras completely ignored. The pale exorcist made a note to check his room thoroughly for any more of Komui's safety devices. If they worked half as well as the assorted Komurins, they would probably be life-threatening if left alone for too long.

The cursed teen debated briefly with himself about whether he should follow Kanda, but Komui hadn't been wrong: the soporific was kicking in and Allen was finding it harder and harder to keep his eyes open. And so he simply laid down—after dragging his pants back up to a more appropriate level and fixing his jacket—and let himself drift. He was asleep almost instantly.

Some hours later, his stomach roared fit to wake the dead and certainly loud enough to wake Allen. The white-haired man rubbed his stomach gently in a comforting gesture and slid off the table, letting the blanket crumple in a heap on the floor. His feet began following the path to the kitchen before his sleep-addled brain even had a chance to kick in and start giving directions. It needn't have bothered; by the time Allen had achieved full awareness, he was already sitting on a bench in the dining hall waiting for Jerry to call him to pick up the order he couldn't remember dictating. _Breakfast will be a surprise, then_.

A few moments later, Jerry shouted his name and piled a few steaming plates onto a tray. Allen fetched it and spent the return trip to the table wondering why everything looked slightly odd. And, once he had seated himself and started eating, he discovered that everything tasted a little odd as well. He didn't normally order his waffles with orange syrup, he rarely ate chocolate anything except for as a marker for special occasions (e.g. returning from a mission with Kanda alive and in one piece), and he _never_ ordered less than six dishes. Except that he just had, because there were only four plates, two of which were orange-flavored waffles and chocolate éclairs.

Still, he wasn't about to let food go to waste, so he dutifully ate it all and, feeling vaguely dissatisfied, returned his dishes to the kitchen.

He drifted to the main office, but Komui had closeted himself in his workroom (according to Reever and others who were taking refuge in the scientist's official, paperwork-littered haunt) and was not to be disturbed at risk of life and limb. Allen resigned himself to a day spent without any official duties and contemplated what he would do next. Kanda's voice surfaced in his mind, sex-roughened and demanding: _Later_. Allen shivered at the tone, and then looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed his sudden spasm. Nobody had.

_Well, _Allen reflected, trying to ignore the feeling of anticipation curling in his gut. After all, he was only going for a social visit. _I guess it is later. I wonder what time he meant? I could always go ask and find out…_

He got a bit lost on the way; the Order headquarters was enormous and after a while the corridors all started looking the same. It didn't help that he had only been to Kanda's room a few times before and, given that they had all been very short, extremely unpleasant encounters with the irate swordsman, that he had pushed those memories so far to the back of his mind that they were almost lost. As it was, he was almost surprised when he found himself in front of a dark wooden door in a less-used corridor. _I knew I would remember it if I saw it_, Allen congratulated himself. The sarcastic voice in his head commented snidely that it was less a matter of memory than a process of elimination: if he knocked on all of the doors in the whole building, eventually he would find Kanda's room. Allen told the voice to shut up.

He had just raised his hand to knock when Kanda's voice came from inside: "It's not locked."

Allen hesitated, and then slowly twisted the knob as though he were afraid that it would explode in his hand if not handled carefully. Then, after drawing a deep breath, he jerked the door open, stepped through, and shut it behind him in one smooth motion so as not to give himself sufficient time to chicken out before entering.

It was dark inside, all shades of gloomy twilight. Allen wondered at it and then wondered why; he had been in the room before and, after all, most of the rooms in the castle were rather dreary. He had to admit that it was made worse by the fact that Kanda had eschewed the normal electric light in favor of the softer, warmer light of a single candle burning on his bedside table. The grey fabric of the bed, black-and-white tiles of the floor, and dark curtains swallowed up the candle's rays and made the shadows deepen until they swallowed nearly everything in the room. At the far end of the room, light glinted off of glass.

That glimmer caught Allen's eyes as an irregularity in the uniform obscurity. It quickly resolved under his questioning gaze into a bell-shaped glass case sitting on the table under the curtain-covered window. Under the glass, a lotus flower hung suspended without any apparent means of attachment, its deep magenta petals lustrous in the low light. It bloomed in full, the petals thick and unblemished, as of yet untouched by decay. It drew the younger exorcist closer, its gleaming color startling and attractive in the darkness of Kanda's quarters. But even as he reached out to touch the glass segregating the flower from the rest of the world, Kanda made his presence known.

"Don't touch that."

Allen jerked his hand back like a guilty child, though his gaze lingered longingly on the blossom before turning to the swordsman.

Kanda was sitting on his bed in the corner, Mugen gleaming across his knees as he ran a soft, oiled cloth down the length of the blade. Whetstones of various grades lay scattered around him, intermingled with discarded rags.

Suddenly Allen felt awkward. _What do I say now? Hey, you wanted to see me later, and now it's later, so let's get back to where we left off? But I'd like it if you suc—."_ He squelched the last thought swiftly, his face heating. He was glad for the darkness shielding his pink face—over the years Kanda had demonstrated himself to be more perceptive than one might give him credit, and Allen knew he would be mortified if Kanda had picked up on that last little bit.

But Kanda seemed to have missed Allen's mental slip and merely continued to run the oiled rag slowly down the curve of Mugen's blade, stroking across the sleek metal in languid caresses that would make a lover jealous. Allen knew because he was practically green with envy. Kanda noticed the dirty look the pale exorcist shot his Innocence and laughed softly, wiping Mugen one more time before sheathing the blade and gently setting within easy reach of the bed. Then the sword wielder patted the coverlet beside him in invitation and began gathering the scattered rags and whetstones into a box he pulled from under his bed. Allen sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, slightly farther away than Kanda had indicated.

The black-maned man dropped the last rag in the box, then kicked it back under the bed with enough force that Allen could hear it bounce off the wall behind. Kanda leaned back onto his elbows and surveyed Allen from under half-lowered lids.

"Nervous?" he asked, as if he couldn't see the cursed teen practically shaking not two feet away.

"A little," Allen admitted.

Kanda hummed under his breath in acknowledgement and slid closer, wrapping his arms around Allen's shoulders from behind and drawing the smaller boy closer until he was leaning into the swordsman's chest. "Do I frighten you?" the dark-haired man whispered into the soft skin under Allen's ear, so close that Allen could feel the brush of his lips.

"No." Allen's response was instantaneous and unequivocal. Shyly, the cursed exorcist tilted his head to expose his neck and allow Kanda access to the skin there.

"Hn," the swordsman hummed under his breath, taking Allen's unspoken offer and nuzzling against the bared throat, his lips and teeth ghosting over the taut flesh. He bit gently at the tendons in the crook of Allen's neck and shoulder then blew a soft breath across the spot. Allen's skin prickled and rose into goosebumps where Kanda's saliva cooled on his throat. One hand, calloused from years of wielding a sword, traced up Allen's chest to grip his windpipe just under his chin. The blunt tips of Kanda's fingers dug in slightly, compressing the firm walls of the carotid arteries pulsing under the skin. Muscles in Allen's back tightened at the gesture and a brief flash of fear jolted down the length of the younger exorcist's spine.

"Do you know what you are doing?" Kanda's voice was low and rough and passionate, though, disconcertingly, the pale teen couldn't tell exactly what passion was coming into play. The hand at his neck tightened again and the edges of Allen's vision blurred slightly. His skin crawled with discomfort and he moved to get away. Kanda's hand dropped instantly from his throat to his shoulder, where it clenched over bone and muscle, the tense fingers crushing down on his clavicle hard enough to draw a gasp of pain from Allen.

Kanda's blue eyes flashed in the darkness as rose and flowed around Allen's body in a sinuous curve, shoving the slighter man down onto the mattress on his back. The candle flared in a sudden draft, its light sharpening and reflecting off of Allen's wide eyes. The fear he had denied earlier—honestly denied at the time, though the cursed teen was no longer certain the safety he felt in Kanda's presence was warranted—slipped back into his mind like poison as the swordsman loomed over him, his dark hair trailing down around them in a veil of jet. Kanda saw his hesitation in that brief glimmer of light and smiled down at him, but the smile was no more than a pained quirk of his lips more akin to a grimace of pain than any expression of pleasure Allen had ever seen.

Another pause yawned between them as they stared into each others' eyes. Allen's shoulder ached at the rough treatment it had received and the pale exorcist was certain that by morning it would be painted dark with a spectacular bruise. He lifted one hand to rub soothingly at the sore flesh, but Kanda moved snake-like, catching his hand in a tight grip and pinning it to the bed next to his face. The sword wielder smirked down at him, then ducked his head to nip at his chin.

"I can't believe that you spent so long in Cross's company without losing that shyness of yours." Kanda's voice was distant and cold, despite the intimacy of the situation. "It it truly astonishing that you still feel so strongly about such little things, such unimportant things…"

Allen wondered for a moment what the dark-haired man was getting at. It wasn't exactly like Kanda to be so vocal in his dissection of Allen's every weakness—he usually found a few mocking words to be sufficient—but he knew without doubt that Kanda had realized something about him that Allen himself probably hadn't.

A low laugh interrupted his train of thought and Kanda dipped his head down to brush his lips against the curve of Allen's ear. The pale exorcist felt the warm wet of the swordsman's tongue brush across the delicate shell of flesh and froze. "Why is it that you still cling to that virginity of yours?" Kanda asked musingly, his breath ghosting past Allen's hyper-sensitive skin. "Is it out of some romantic notion of surrendering it to someone…special?"

The hot red blush burned Allen's cheeks almost before the words registered. "Wha—?" he began, twisting his neck to meet Kanda's steady, hot blue gaze.

"I'm curious, Bean Sprout," the elder exorcist explained, leaning in to speak against Allen's lips. "Why is it that you are giving something you have guarded so carefully, so jealously, in spite of your mentor's depravity and the potential death at every turn that awaits us exorcists, to _me?_"

"I respect you." The first confession was easiest.

"I like you." The second was not terribly difficult either, but as Allen's lips moved to frame the one he felt most keenly and held most dear, he stumbled.

"I lo…I…nn"

Kanda cocked his head and amusement sparkled in his eyes and quirked the corners of his lips up into the tiny grin Allen had slowly grown familiar with over the years.

"You what?" he prompted, propping his chin up on Allen's sternum and sprawling over the slighter frame of the younger man so that Allen couldn't move, could only feel the heat and strength of the body pinning him against the mattress.

Allen spat the words out before he could hesitate again: "I think I love you!" It was rather louder than he had intended and Kanda winced at the sudden pain in his ears.

"Well," the swordsman breathed out, leaning back to stare down into Allen's eyes. The cursed teen tried to hold his gaze, looking for some sort of acknowledgement. "I suppose that makes sense, in an odd sort of way…"

Nettled by Kanda's ambiguous response, Allen jerked himself upright. "Is that all you have to say?" he demanded, knowing full well that he sounded exactly like one of those desperate women in the trashy romance novels that Linali was so fond of. He'd always thought that the pathetic declarations of love—usually right before, during, or after sex—were trite and cliché, thrown in more as some sort of excuse for the wild rutting than as any honest, emotive declaration. How embarrassing it was to realize that he had done the same thing as every paperback heroine he had scorned on the long train rides while keeping an eye on the sleeping Linali so he could return the book to her pack before she woke and noticed that it was missing.

"Should I say something back?" Kanda responded, his voice suddenly cold. Any amusement that had colored his tone previously was killed off faster than a spring blossom in a late frost. "Do you want me to say that I love you to?"

Allen gaped at him speechlessly, then anger surged in his belly and he rallied. "Of course I expect you to say _something!_ Maybe you don't feel the same way, but you must like me at least a little if you are doing this. You even used your mouth and…and…what you did earlier!" H was blushing, he knew he was, he could feel the heat of it, and he cursed himself for being so childish in a critical moment. A spike of jealousy shot through him at the thought of Cross and Kanda and Lavi, all of whom seemed to be able to rattle off all sorts of innuendo without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment. He couldn't even repeat what the swordsman had done to him in the infirmary.

"Is that what it is?" there was something malicious in Kanda's deep blue eyes as he spoke. "Are you still so convinced that there is enough good in the world that people only have sex when there is affection behind it? Did Cross not take you to enough whorehouses to debase you of that notion?"

"Fine! I get it!" Allen was screaming now and he could feel the sting in his eyes that heralded nascent tears. "It doesn't mean anything to you, so I'll go now. I'm sorry I let you think that I was just looking for a quick fuck!" He shoved at Kanda's shoulders, and tried to swing his legs off the bed. Kanda wouldn't let him leave. The pale exorcist struggled a little longer to no effect: the swordsman remained rigid and immovable, keeping him pinned on the bed.

"God damn it, Kanda, let me go!"

"No."

"What!" Allen was so shocked by the refusal that he stilled, incredulity etched across his features.

"I said: 'No,'" Kanda repeated. "I'm not going to let you go until I get what you came here for. Or did you think that it was fair for me to give you pleasure without receiving any in return? And here I thought that you were the one that insisted so much on repaying your debts."

Allen felt sick to his stomach. _What the hell is wrong with him? _He wondered, his mind racing. _Earlier, he seemed so…I don't know…relaxed, almost happy. _He swallowed hard to free the lump in his throat and rasped: "You did that on your own. I didn't ask for that."

Kanda threw back his head and laughed. Allen stared at the bronzed curve of the swordsman's throat and the way his long ebon hair spilled down over his chest to pool of Allen's belly.

"You're right," the elder exorcist replied when his laughter subsided. His voice was a low, throbbing whisper that touched a deep, visceral part of Allen's mind even through the anxiety. "You're right. I didn't ask. And I'm not going to ask this time, either."

The white-haired teen knew instantly what Kanda intended and lashed out. Kanda caught the fist that had streaked toward his face in one hand and tightened his grip until Allen could feel his bones shifting painfully under the thin skin. He bucked, trying to shove the heavier, stronger body off of his own, but failed as Kanda simply sat up to straddle his hips like a man riding an errant colt. Allen had sparred with Kanda before, but had never really realized just how strong his colleague was until that moment as he struggled in true terror to escape. Kanda simply restrained him, collecting both of the cursed exorcist's hands into one of his own and holding them above Allen's head. With his free hand, Kanda reached for Mugen and drew the freshly-sharpened blade from its sheathe. Pale grey eyes widened as the winter-pale edge of the long katana whispered across the black fabric covering his chest. Horrified, Allen reached for Crown Clown's power, expecting the surge of pure, brilliant light that poured from his activated Innocence. His fear magnified a hundred-fold when nothing responded. Kanda smirked down at him and drew his blade across Allen's chest. The fabric of the younger exorcist's uniform parted easily under the keen edge and slipped to the sides as his chest heaved with his gasping breaths.

"Kanda, stop," Allen pleaded, hating how weak he sounded, even as he summoned Crown Clown again and again. "Kanda, please, I don't want this!"

"But you did, Bean Sprout," Kanda whispered back, "otherwise you wouldn't be here, in my room, with no one around to stop me."

"Don't call me that!" the cursed man hissed, terror metamorphosing into killing rage.

"Why not?" Kanda wasn't paying attention any more, his cobalt eyes trained on the pale skin of Allen's pectorals where Mugen had left a thin, beading trail of blood. He ducked his head and ran the flat of his tongue across it, lapping up the crimson fluid even as more welled to the surface.

"Because Kanda calls me that, and you're not him!" Allen snarled back from between gritted teeth. He had said it as a sort of final defense of the image of the man he thought he loved, never expecting it to raise any response beyond a snide comment about how little he apparently know the swordsman. Instead, Kanda stilled above him, his head still bowed over his chest. The dark-haired man's aura flared menacingly, making the candle sputter in its stand, and Kanda lifted his chin to glare up at Allen.

Allen stared back wide-eyed with fear and rage, paralyzed by the extreme emotions wracking his slight frame. His muscled quivered with adrenaline and he felt light-headed, the black haloing his vision warning of his impending unconsciousness. Kanda's deep blue eyes met his stare and bored into him searchingly. The pale exorcist wasn't sure what he was looking for, but was grateful that the swordsman had stopped, even momentarily. The candlelight reflected off of Mugen's blade, which still lay threateningly across his chest, and glinted red in Kanda's eyes.

It was as though Allen was staring down a demon, and that thought sent another shot of adrenaline into his already over-taxed body and gave him strength to wrench one arm free from Kanda's restraint. Allen's hand shot out and grabbed for the edge of the night stand, intended to give the pale teen enough leverage to drag himself out from under Kanda's body, but the swordsman moved swiftly, so swiftly that Allen didn't see until it was too late, and slammed Mugen's pommel into the crook of the elbow of Allen's extended arm. The cursed limb went numb and dropped pointlessly onto the cabinet, knocking the candle over the edge to crash onto the floor. The candle shattered on impact and extinguished itself with a hiss and a cloud of acrid smoke in a pool of its own melted wax.

Shadows rushed in from the corners of the room to cover everything in pitch black. Allen's pale grey eyes slid from where they had looked so hopefully toward the door back to Kanda's face. The white-haired boy sucked in a breath in surprise.

Even with the light gone, an unholy redness still flickered in the swordsman's eyes.

It was familiar and the younger man racked his brain, searching for the memories that would tell him why he felt that he knew that light. Above him, Kanda swore, his voice suddenly a lighter pitch, more tenor than baritone. The hand restraining Allen's right arm clenched and Allen felt the sharp bite of talons into his forearm. The pain slammed into his brain at the same time his epiphany did.

Allen squeezed his eyes shut and curled into a ball. There was no resistance; Kanda's body above him shifted and was gone, sliding off to lay on the bed beside him. The smooth sheets and soft mattress became cold and hard and new aches made themselves known in Allen's shoulder and hip, the same pains one would have if they spent the night on a hard wooden floor. Agony lanced through his chest and his breath caught, and he wheezed. Silver light glared behind his closed eyelids. Allen slitted open one eye and glanced at the forearm Kanda had driven his nails though a few seconds prior. Timcampy looked back as much as a golem could, his teeth latched onto Allen's wrist like a bear trap.

The cursed exorcist sucked in a breath and leapt to his feet. Black stars exploded in his vision and he staggered, swaying as the blood pressure in his head dropped. Firm hands steadied him and when his vision cleared, Allen found himself looking straight into Kanda's angry face.

"Don't stand up so quickly, Bean Sprout, if you are just going to fall over agai—nng!" Kanda's vexed scolding was cut off as Allen, remembering what had happened the last time he had been in such close proximity to the swordsman, struck out and landed a left-handed rabbit punch to Kanda's jaw that sent the older exorcist staggering back a few paces.

"What the _hell,_ Bean Sprout?" Kanda growled, rubbing his jaw. Allen was too distracted by the bright, feather-like billows of energy covering his chest and arm to notice.

"Crown Clown…" he breathed out, lifting his right hand to brush across the sleek metal of the Innocence.

"What did you expect, halfwit?" Kanda was pissed off and glaring like death itself.

"Kanda?" Allen's question had a wondering note that set off warnings in the sword wielder's head. Blue eyes shifted down to where Timcampy was still latched onto the younger exorcist and his gaze hardened.

"It's here, isn't it?" he asked the golem, his voice cold and controlled. "It got to Allen, didn't it?"

Timcampy fluttered golden wings and let go of Allen's arm in favor of settling onto the shorter exorcist's white hair. It agreed with Kanda as well as a mute golem could.

"_Fuck_," Kanda shouted and slammed one fist into the bedroom wall. Plaster and oak paneling cracked under the onslaught.

Allen blinked, rapidly shaking off the horrible waking dream and returning to the also-unpleasant reality. "It possessed me, too. It…_fed_…off of me…" the pale teen shuddered in revulsion, remembering the Kanda he had seen. It had been one thing to listen to Kanda relate what had happened in his demonic dreams, but experiencing it first-hand was quite another. If there had been anything left in his gut, Allen was sure he would have spewed it all over the floor. Instead, his dry heave brought up only a thin streamer of dark, thick blood.

"We cannot stay here any longer," Samuel interjected worriedly. Panic made the normally-calm Finder's words come out in a higher pitch than Allen remembered.

"I need to eat," Allen gasped even as he wiped away the last of the sticky gore from his lips. He surveyed Crown Clown with a critical eye. It was far paler that Allen could ever remember seeing it and the streamers of energy that usually radiated from it were reduced to faint, wispy tendrils. "I can't keep Crown Clown going for much longer like this, and…" he trailed off and pressed his cursed hand to the radiant metal plate that was covering the mangled hole through his chest.

The black-haired exorcist raked his younger companion with an assessing stare—one that almost, but not quite, hid the lingering guilt in his eyes—then nodded.

"There will be something in the kitchen, and then we need to get outside." Kanda responded to the situation as he usually did: he took control. "Clearly the thing isn't stopped by the wards on the house—either that or they vanished when Mr. Harrison died. At any rate, we'll do what we decided on yesterday. Let's go."

The ragged trio set off, slinking through the halls like strays that have been kicked one too many times. They retraced the same path they had taken the day before, following the dried bloodstains on the floor until they were again in the dining room. Lilith's corpse was gone from the study. Allen began to open his mouth to point this out to Kanda, but the Japanese silenced him with a jerk of his head while he skirted the long table and jerked open the door hidden in the wall paneling that the servants had used up 'til recently to bring food to the dining room. An enormous kitchen sprawled out behind the door, though it only looked like a small part of had been used in the last few weeks.

A quick search yielded enough food to satisfy even Allen's appetite, though the anxiety that coiled in Allen's belly made it taste like ashes in his mouth. He tried to ignore the measuring glances that Kanda and Samuel kept shooting in his direction, but it was difficult. He wondered if his disquiet was so obvious to them. Finally, he set down his fork and brushed the crumbs from the front of his borrowed uniform. Crown Clown's glow was stronger and steadier, a silent reassurance to the white-haired exorcist.

"Alright," he said quietly, knowing that he already had their attention. "I'm as ready as I'll ever be. You wanted us to go to the main courtyard, Kanda?"

The swordsman nodded in response to Allen's question and squashed his knee-jerk rebuke for speaking about battle-plans in unsecured territories. The incubus had already been inside both of their heads, after all; it wasn't likely that the creature would be surprised by anything they might do.

Finding the front door from the dining room was remarkably easy: the kitchen had a side door onto a hall that led almost directly to the entryway. Samuel ran his hands across the long white coat of the Finder's uniform, making sure that his barrier posts were accounted for.

"I'm set," he told Kanda as calmly as he could, fisting his hands in the fabric of his pockets to hide their trembling.

"Me too," Allen added. Kanda stared at him for a long time. Allen could tell that he wanted to ask about what he had seen, but the dark-haired man refrained.

"Then let's go," Kanda said simply and threw open the front door.

In the center of the courtyard, the red-headed incubus stood with his winged back towards them, looking for all the world as though he were enjoying the pale moonlight streaming across his face. In the dark, the blood-red of his hair looked black. It tipped its horned head to glance back over its shoulder, its lips immediately settling into a sweet smile.

"Ah," the voice was the same sweet tenor Allen remembered in his dream. "I'm glad that you all made it. Won't you come enjoy the gardens with me? The flowers are quite lovely in the night."

Crown Clown responded immediately to Allen's direction and morphed into a silver cannon where his left arm should be. The first shot ripped through the incubus's torso, splattering bloody flesh out the other side in a grisly fountain. The incubus was unperturbed and simply sighed, picking a hank of its long hair out of the bloody mess where its chest had been. Already, the hole was closing as hot pink plasma swirled and solidified in the gap.

"You should be more grateful to me, brat," it said levelly, "since I gave you such a nice dream. I must say that it was terribly convenient for you two to be sent together. It is ever so much more fun to play with you that it was to deal with those other exorcists. Your emotions are so much…stronger."

"Fuck you," Allen responded in equally polite tones and then Crown Clown roared into action, spitting silver rounds of machine-gun fire. The incubus leapt into the air and snapped open its wings, clearly intending to take their fight to a different location, only to be slammed back to the ground as a clear, shimmering barrier spread from the four corners of the courtyard. Samuel, whom had so far been completely disregarded as a potential threat by the incubus, had done his work well and was already moving to reinforce the wards he had cast.

Kanda smirked at the incubus's howl of rage and lifted Mugen in a mock-salute. The Innocence blade gleamed in the watery light of the moon shining through the barrier. The incubus's long, flexible tail whipped like an agitated cat's, then stilled as the creature sank into a crouch. Kanda dropped into a fighting stance just as the beast sprang forward, heedless of the blasts from Crown Clown that pierced its ever-regenerating flesh.

"Are you going to kill me, little toy?" It hissed at Kanda as its claws were parried away by Mugen, the hard keratin dragging across the Innocence with a sound like the wailing of damned souls.

Kanda grinned maniacally, bloodlust shining in his eyes and leaving behind only the will to fight. "No," the ebon-haired man laughed in the incubus's face. "Killing you doesn't seem to work. I'm going to drag you down to Hell and hand you back to your master like the little bitch you are."

In the vicious light pouring from Crown Clown, Allen's face contorted into a feral grin.

* * *

Author's note: Hello, all. There are no excuses for how long it took me to update, so I won't give you any. Thank you to everyone who actually stuck with me and read this chapter. For those that didn't (and who clearly won't see this note), I'm sorry I lost you along the way.

Are you all keeping up with the D. Gray-Man manga? I won't give you any spoilers, but I will say that my regard for the manga now oscillates wildly between fury, frustration, and the affection that comes from long use. You probably know what I mean.

Unless I get attacked by a rabid plot bunny, there will be two more chapters. Given the resistance I have developed to the suggestions of the aforementioned plot vermin, that number should be accurate.

If things seem a little disjointed (particularly temporally) in this chapter, comfort yourself with the knowledge that it is at least partially intended. I wanted to recreate the same degree of disorientation that Kanda and Allen are feeling while under the influence of the incubus within the text. Of course, some of the choppiness is a result of being written over the course of a year in fits and starts; sometimes literally one line a day, sometimes several pages. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing you in the next chapter.

Thanks again for reading,

Ibrium


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